


Camp Bleska

by Caseycuervo



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Animal Abuse, Child Abuse, Explicit Language, F/M, M/M, Multi, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sexual Content, Torture, Violence, illegal relationship, possible BDSM elements in future chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2014-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-28 13:40:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 63,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caseycuervo/pseuds/Caseycuervo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. While working as a counselor at a Camp Bleska, Duo is faced with a young disturbed boy who's determined to seduce him. (circa 1960's)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Gundam Wing AC

Pairings: 2x1x2, brief 2xH, strong 1+R

Rating: M

Warning: shounen ai/yaoi, illegal relationship (Duo 20, Heero 13), sexual content, language, possible BDSM touches in future chapters. (As pointed out by a guest, I need to add more warnings.) This fic will encompass child abuse, psychopathic tendencies which include animal torture, and pain infliction. I will add more warnings as the story progresses.

Summary: While working as a counselor at a Camp Bleska, Duo is faced with a young disturbed boy who's determined to seduce him. (circa 1960's)

Title: Camp Bleska

The dark room echoed the sounds of squeaking bed springs, erotic moans, and the repeated _smack_ ,  _smack_ ,  _smack_ , of flesh meeting flesh. Nails digging into skin leaving crescent indentations, the violet eyed man tightened his grip on the waist of the boy riding his stiff cock and kept his momentum of upward thrusts quick and brutal. The bouncing boys' mewls of pleasure heightened with each shove from the dick buried in his passage, rubbing vigorously against his prostate. His own erect dick slapping raunchily against his own abdomen.

_/I'm going to hell...I'm going to jail and then I'm going to hell./_  The camp counselor berated himself, biting his lips in attempt to keep himself silent. Though they were in his private cabin in the dead of night, Duo didn't want to add to the noise and attract any unwanted attention, but he reveled in the sounds that escaped the young boys mouth. He knew what he was doing was wrong, against the law, but the sinful creature atop him pushed his limits to the end. Besides, they had crossed the boundaries between right and wrong once already, why not go all the way and make the mistake worth while?

His violet eyes appraised the young boy - seven years his junior - as his tousled head lulled from shoulder to shoulder, lips parted in ecstasy, taut muscles constricting and relaxing with each up and downward thrust of his narrow waist. The boys' blue eyes fluttered open, pining him with a fevered, lustful gaze.  _/Sinful./_  His mind supplied again. Yes, the boy was sinful, lascivious, and maladjusted. The tan, blue-eyed, supple creature taunted him at every chance he got, pushing Duo against an invisible wall until he cracked.

Leaning down, that heavenly or hellish boy placed a feathery light kiss to Duos' lips. Intertwining his fingers into the tousled, sweat soaked brown hair, Duo tugged harshly and plundered the boy's mouth, and received a stifled moan for his efforts. Placing a hand on the pubescent boys member, Duo masturbated the boy to completion. The boys' moans augmented as his hot semen flowed over Duo's stomach. The sensation of that warm bodily fluid on him and the sheath of the boys' body tightening around his cock pulled him over the edge as well, cumming in his ass.

_/Definitely going to hell./_  He thought as the boy collapsed on his chest, head buried in the crock of his neck, hot breath panting against his sweat dampened skin.

-Three Weeks Prior-

Taking a job at a summer camp wasn't Duos' ideal choice, but jobs in Ohio didn't come by easily for a high school drop out with a long, crazy braid. Maybe he should have stayed in school, but being labeled as the school "fag" at every institution he was ever enrolled in drove him out, bullied until he couldn't take it anymore. Though he did like boys, he fancied girls as well and never dated another guy openly. Obviously, it was his appearance that gave him away. And the rumors. Hearsay around the schools claimed he blew jocks and gave it away for money. The former was true, but not the latter. Anyways, his decision to drop out two months before graduation landed him shitty jobs like the one he was in now.

Camp Bleska was an eight week summer get away for teenage boys and girls between the ages of eleven to fourteen, and paid minimum wage, which was the best he could hope for. Set along the shore of Lake Erie, he could have done worse.  _/Flipping burgers is way worse./_ He told himself. He could do this job, he was alright with kids, he could be someone they could talk to and look up to. Or so he hoped.

A dark-haired girl, another counselor judging by her uniform, the same as his own, approached him.

"Hey," she said with a smile and extended her hand, "Name's Hilde."

"Duo," he replied with a wink and shook the hand she offered.

"Looks like the kids are here," she said, jerking her chin in the direction of the four yellow buses that came driving around the bend. "Ever work with kids?"

"Uh, no, but I've been around a lotta different kinds of kids," Duo answered.

She eyed him suspiciously. "How so?"

"Grew up in the foster system, bounced around in a lot of different homes. Had a lotta different brothers and sisters."

"Oh," she intoned, drawing the word out. Turning her attention to the kids exiting the buses, she decided not to ask anymore about Duo's past, such things were a private nature, and she knew the foster care system in this country had many faults.

Duo additionally turned his attention to the adolescents. Eyeing the second bus in the row of four, his eyes landed on a an exotic boy. Dark brown hair, slender body, tan sun-kissed skin, and even from a far, Duo could see the extraordinarily deep blue irises framed by long dark lashes. Those alien almond-shaped baby blues turned on him. A jolt of something unnerving tingled down his spine like a shock of electricity. There was something different about this boy, something demanding and lethal. He was under this lovely creatures power before he even knew his name.

The camp president, an excentric man named Howard, handed out lists to each of the six counselors with the names of their campers. Duo didn't pay too much attention to the faces of the kids that flocked around him as he called out their names. He was in charge of one cabin full of girls and one cabin full of boys, six to each. Looking around his group, Duo noticed the extrinsic, lilith boy stood in the back of his group. Upon closer inspection, he could see the emptiness of those steely blue depths, the lack of life and light.

Deep down in his bones, Duo knew the reasons behind why a kid would have that kind of blank, uncaring, soulless stare. He used to have that same gaze himself, before he got help.

Leading his group of campers to their cabins, Duo recited the camp rules. Lights out at nine thirty. Only eating at the designated meal times, if you don't eat then, than you wait until the next meal. No sneaking into each others cabins after dark. Anything on the do-not bring list would be confiscated upon its finding, such as, cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, porno rags, knives, or anything the counselor deemed inappropriate. Consequences for rule breaking, bullying, or for being caught in the opposite sexes cabin after lights out would be dealt with immediately, which included being suspended from specific activities or sent home. Duo also told his group that he didn't want to be their babysitter, or their disciplinarian, he wanted to be their friend and make sure they had eight weeks of fun. The six girls and five boys smiled and grinned at their cordial camp counselor; all but the strange ghost of a boy in the back.

"Cabin Apo is for the girls, Cabin Weayaya is for the boys. That cabin over there," Duo pointed in the direction of an identical, smaller wood cabin, "is mine. If you ever need anything, my door is always open."

"What do the names mean?" A blond cheery girl asked.

"They're both Sioux names. Apo is dawn and Weayaya is dusk," Duo answered with a smile.

The boys and girls entered their respective cabins to claim their bunks and unpack their belongings. Duo returned to his cabin to wait for dinner; the kids had arrived late in the day. The braided twenty year old rolled himself a marijuana joint from the stash he had brought with him, lit up, and began to smoke it in his small bathroom. Halfway through his doobie, he heard the shrill scream of a girl come from the cabin near his. Tossing his joint in the toilet, Duo bolted from his own cabin in a dead sprint to Cabin Apo.

Running through the door, Duo yelled, "What is it? What's wrong?"

Two of the girls laughed as four others shrieked with fright.

A girl with brown hair pointed from her bunk and said, "Blondie over there found a lizard in her bed."

Relief flooded his system. Walking over to the second bed on the left side of the room, Duo plucked the reptile from the sheets. He had the rest of the girls check their beds and the wood floor beneath for anymore "scary" intruders. Three beds on each side of the room, all six girls searched about their cabin, including the three shower stalls in the bathroom. At the sound of snickering, Duo looked over his shoulder to see all six boys giggling at the front screen door. He waved them off with a smirk.

"Alright, no more critters?" he asked the girls.

"No," many of the girls chimed in unison.

The blond girl who had asked about the names of the cabins stood by the bed that Duo found the lizard wiggling around in.

Still holding the twitching thing between his cupped hands, Duo asked the girl, "Are you okay, honey?"

"Yes. Thank you Mr. Maxwell," she sighed miserably.

"Call me Duo."

"Okay, Duo," she smiled, lighting up her pale blue eyes.

Not remembering the names from the list, Duo asked, "What was your name again?"

"Relena," she boasted. "And that's my friend Sylvia and Dorothy," she added pointing to the other two blond girls in the room. He waved at them and they waved back.

"Alright ladies, dinner will be announced soon at the sound of a ringing bell. Hurry and get unpacked."

"Okay Duo!" All six of them cheered.

Walking outside, Duo freed the lizard and watched it scamper to the trees where it stopped at the feet of a boy.  _That_  boy. Looking Duo dead in the eye, the kid lifted his foot and brought it down on the defenseless lizard. Squashing the reptile under his foot with a sickening  _crunch_.

A cold, malevolent air breezed over them, ruffling the boy's dark hair and sending his own braid whipping behind him. He wanted to yell, chastise the boy. But something held him back. That cold, fatal aura around the kid kept Duos' mouth sealed. He walked back to his cabin.

At dinner in a large elongated cabin called the mess hall, Duo ate with the other counselors. He chatted with the girl, Hilde, and made quick friends with a Chinese man around his age named Wufei. He learned that Hilde wanted a respectable job in childcare, and that the stern Wufei was here to make extra money before he went off to college in California. The three got along famously, though Duo had a way with getting people to like and come around to him in a friendly manner, despite his uncommon features. They discussed the kids in their groups briefly, and Duo told the story of the girl, Relena, who'd been scared by a lizard.

"Relena Peacecraft is in your care?" A tall man with long blond hair asked from the other end of the counselors table.

"Yeah, why?" Duo asked.

"That's my sister. You better keep a good eye on her. She's a good kid, but that friend, Dorothy, of hers gets her into trouble," the man stated and spooned a spoonfil of baked beans into his mouth.

"Will do. What's your name?"

"Milliardo, nice to meet you Duo Maxwell."

"Back at 'cha Milly."

The blond man snorted and returned his attention to his meal. Peering over his shoulder, the braided counselor appraised his campers. The girl, Relena, was seated across that freak of a boy with the heavenly baby blues. She seemed to be chatting nonstop to the boy, who kept his gaze on the food before him. Maybe the kid could make a friend or two. Maybe that scene outside the cabins hadn't been as foreboding as Duo thought, but something told him that wasn't the case.

If that little sadistic monster was going to be hanging around Milliardo's sister, then he was going to have to keep a very close eye on her.

The night preceded around a large bonfire where Howard, the camp president, told spooky stories to the kids. Duo kept an eye on that strange boy - he needed to learn his name - who sat by Relena. He didn't seem so evil by her, the kid paid attention to her, calmed her when she jumped at the ridiculous story. Maybe he was seeing the beginning signs of a summer love. But they boys eyes mainly remained on the large fire, the embers reflecting in his eyes, the light of the flame dancing abstract patterns against tan flesh.

Suddenly, those vacant orbs flashed to his, a sense of knowing he was being watched resigned between them. Duo diverted his gaze immediately, not wanting that penetrating stare on him, but feeling the weight of it all the same. Duo fidgeted uncomfortably under that weight. When he thought it gone, he looked back and his violet eyes found blue again.

_/What's with this fucker?/_  He asked himself. But he knew. Knew desolate eyes didn't become that way without neglect, abuse, trauma. Unless...unless the kid was a born sociopath. Hell bent on deceit and violence. Such deceit could be easily attained from the young beauty for his physical appearance betrayed any hidden evil that lay within. Duo would know. He knew that built up anger, evil, could lash out at anyone at anytime. From his own unfortunate past, Duo knew the extent of what abuse could do to a child, how it could create an angry, vengeful creature. How it could change an innocent being into a cold, heartless clandestine child that craved blood, the cries of others, lusted after creating artful pain inflicted on lovers.

It scared him. It terrified him to see what he looked like at that age mirrored back at himself. A boy wrought with sexual abuse, bounced around from home to home, never safe. A boy who witnessed his mother's death at the hands of a vicious, territorial boyfriend.

But Duo didn't allow himself to think that way. Many kinds of abuse could lead a child down that path. For all he knew, that boy was simply born that way, an abomination of nature. A naturally born killer.

Sure, in his past, Duo tortured and killed small animals to inflict the pain he was dealt by others, by "parents", by a teacher who was supposed to be trustworthy, respected, and not at all feared by, but his wretched life made him a constant victim. If only he knew the power that blue-eyed boy would place him under. He might have left that night.

After the story telling, Duo rounded up his campers and lead them back to their cabins by flash light. His observant violet eyes took in the sight of Relena hanging back by the dark boy, still chatting away though the boy didn't seem to pay attention, just kept his eyes on the ground.

As the group dispersed into their cabins, Duo kept his eyes staked on _that_  boy. Made sure he went into his own cabin. He noticed the other boys kept their distance from him, like he was a piraha.

Sighing in resignation, the violet eyed man entered his own cabin. Dispensing a small amount of cannabis into white rolling paper, Duo licked the paper and rolled it between his thumb and middle finger to seal it shut. Igniting the joint, he placed a Ray Charles black vinyl in the record player he brought from his hole in the wall apartment in Rock Creek, Ashtabula County. Inhaling leisurely, Duo allowed himself to fall backwards onto his bed. The mattress creaked as he bounced, old springs singing with signs of over use and old age.

He sang along quietly with the record, finishing his marijuana cigarette. Putting it out, he let the record play itself out to the end. Falling asleep, Duo dreamed sweet dreams of the mother he once had, forgetting about the peculiar boy under his care.

Awakening to the annoying toll of a bell, Duo groaned wishing for ten more minutes to sleep in, but he job didn't pay him to sleep. Rolling out of bed, the braided man threw on his second uniform, three of which he was give, and dressed. Short red mesh shorts and a grey short-sleeved shirt with the camps emblem, Duo made his way outside. Faced with groggy, yawning prepubescent, the braided man waved for them to follow him to the mess hall for breakfast.

Usually, he would consume whatever food was placed in front of him, but in a half conscious state, Duo only finished a fraction his meal before the campers were released for the days first activities.

It was upon the counselors to teach the campers on how to navigate through the forest incase they wandered too far and got lost. Teaching the kids to make handmade compasses with a needle, a refrigerator magnet, a piece of cork, and a small dish to fill with water, Duo completed the assignment with flying colors. His group finished the task and held onto the items which could save them if they got lost, though they were advised to always have a partner for wherever they went.

The next task was braided bracelets made of colorful yarn; most of the boys groaned in distress. It was his duty to get all the kids on board whether they wanted to or not. Duo taught the group how to make a four stranded braid, which was fairly easy since that was the way he styled his hair.

"I can't do it!" The frustrated Sylvia complained.

"Don't be such a cry baby!" A boy named Muller bellowed.

"Hey!" Duo hollered, "No name calling."

Duo showed the irritated blond how to make her bracelet with strands of pink, orange, yellow and red yarn. By the end, she was happy. And by the early afternoon, he instructed the kids to change into their bathing suits for a swim in Lake Erie.

As the kids ran off, one lingered, passing him by slowly, eyes boring into his own with a gaze so icy it froze his blood. The wind blew, sending more shivers down his spine. What was with this kid that made the air around him turn to icicles? As the boy passed, the leaves dangling from surrounding tree calmed, an eery silence claiming the air around the braided man. He refused his bodily need to quake under natures distress, under those scrutinizing eyes.

_/Who is he?_ / he asked himself as he watched the boys back fade into the distance.

Duo watched happily as the kids played boisterously in the lake, splashing, swimming, and running about the shoreline. A dock to the right side of where the kids played was where the strange boy sat, knees curled to his chest. That rested Duo's worried mind. He watched over the eleven kids in the water, knowing one was out of harms way, but that  _one_  could cause harm if he wanted.

That girl, Relena, played near the dock with her two blond friends. Watching over, Duo witnessed the Muller boy playfully shove the blond Peacecraft girl. It wasn't rueful or ill willed, just lively sport. But that blue-eyed boy leapt from the dock, landed on Muller, and continued to pummel the other and hold him by the neck underwater.

"Stop!" Duo screamed as he ran into the water. "Stop it!"

But the boy kept his fists flying.

Grabbing said boy by wrapping an arm under his arms, around his chest, he heaved the violent kid upward. The Muller boy surfaced, with gasps of needed air.

"You crazy fuck!" Muller screamed.

The boy wrapped in Duo's strong grasp continued to flail manically. He hauled the turbulent teen to the shore, kicking and screaming.

"What's the matter with you?" He yelled in the boys face. It was day two, and the kid was already causing a ruckus.

Those blue eyes filled with something akin to life, anger, outrage. "He pushed her!"

"That doesn't make it okay to beat him up!" Duo yelled. "I'm going to have to take you to Howard."

"NO!" The boy pleaded, "Don't please! I'll behave!" Those blue eyes filled with fear.

He didn't know what the boy had been through, but he felt a kinship of turmoil that only a hard life could bring. "You gotta control yourself."

"What about him? He pushed Marino!"

"Who's Marino? That's Relena," Duo pointed out.

The boys troubled features fell to the blank, empty stare from before. "That's what I meant," he stated in a monochromatic voice.

Duo knew that was a lie. The boy had seen another girl in place of Relena, being bullied by the Muller boy. But he knew he didn't have the boys trust to ask him what, or rather who was referring to.

Kneeling in front of the kid, soothing the dark damp hair against the boys face, Duo asked, "What's your name Kid?"

"His name's Heero," Relena answered for the boy, walking up behind to them from the lake's shoreline.

Gazing into those freaky blue eyes, Duo questioned, "That's your name?"

The boy nodded.

"Well, Heero," the violet eyed man started, "Thank you for standing up for Miss Relena, but you gotta come to me when something like that happens."

Bending at the waist, the elusive boy Heero whispered in Duo's ear, "I'll come to you for whatever you like." Duo didn't, couldn't respond to that kind of open-ended statement from a teen who was that young. As Heero stood upright, his blue eyes flicked with something intangible, hungry, dirty, and wrong.

Duo exhaled a shaky breath as the mysterious human beast sauntered away from him, back to the lake. Swaying his hips in short black trunks in a lustful way no boy should know how to do at such a supple age. It made him sick. Nauseous. He wanted to slap the zeal right out of the kid before he became a being like himself. Someone bent on kink, unable to keep a successful relationship going without the sadistic and masochistic pull of master and slave, dominate and submissive, out of any romantic association he would be involved in, in the future.

That same shiver, same exhale, held a hint of want, desire.

Shaking the overriding feeling from his frame, Duo focused his attention back on the kids playing in the surf, not wanting to think of a young boy in the same way his perpetrators thought of him, in a sexual manner. He was not a monster. He was not a predator. He was not a disgusting pig that took advantage of young, baffling boys.

No. He would not give in to the erotic, alluring temptation of juvenile flesh.

Glaring daggers out at the others, Duo yelled, "Muller, Trant! You're going to far out!" And the two boys were swimming too far out into Lake Erie. He didn't need to go swimming out after them, not after the erotic - though he refused to acknowledge the encounter as such - display he received from the Prussian blue-eyed Heero.

Looking over his list of campers, Duo came across the boys full name and residence. Heero. Heero Yuy. From Ashtabula County, just like himself. In fact, the boy lived ten miles from his apartment, went to the same middle school he had enrolled in for one semester before being bounced to another ungrateful, money hungry foster family in a different county.

Being forced to too many different schools, exposed to too many different groups of peers made Duo have the need to stand out. Making himself physically different from those around him gave the tossed around kid an unforgettable appearance, an air not so easily forgotten like he was when placed from one home to the next. He wanted to be remembered, for whatever reason, it didn't matter, as long as he was remembered.

In his early days as a foster kid, Duo teased others rather than to be on the receiving end of teasing. His first good friend, Solo, stuck up for him from grades one to four. Until he was shot accidentally by his drunken father whom had taken the boy hunting for deer.

After that, Duo didn't connect well with others until his sophomore year in high school. Middle school was hellish. Plagued with the label as the "freak", he took out his vengeance on frogs, captured bird, and rodents. Shooting them with beebee guns, stabbing them with dulled knives, mutilating their genitals in viscous renditions of the way he had been touched, made the young Duo feel vindicated, justified.

A young, aspiring high school counselor helped him put his troubled mind at ease. Detered him from becoming a full-blown psychopath. He found redemption, forgiveness, forgave himself for the things he could not stop, but that sadistic side still breathed healthily within him. Instead of torturing animals, he tortured his lovers, with their consent. The approval was key. The key to allow him to do as he pleased, deal out the pain that made his loins tense, heated. The pain of others aroused a side of him he wished to extinction. He loved his desires to tie others up, chain them down, asphyxiate them, smack them around in the bed, occasionally dominate them in the geographical way animals marked their territory. But he in turn loathed himself for the same things. That need to inflict, and the trigger by pain of others he hated. Wanting nothing more than to be apart of a healthy,  _adult_  relationship.

The bell tolled, signaling lunch. Everyone made way for their cabins to change, all except for Heero, who kept himself seated on the dock, legs crossed at the ankle, knees bent to his chest, eyes blazing into the murky water.

"Heero," Duo called. "It's time to go."

The boy looked at him, blank gaze affront. Lifting himself from the wooden dock, Heero marched to his cabin, Duo watching him all the way.

As he stalked to his own cabin, in hopes of taking a few drags of a doobie to sooth his unnerved edges, Duo's mind glittered with images of the exotic boy tied to his bed frame, crying to bed touched, eager to -

_/NO! NO! NO!/_  He screamed mentally at himself. He was not like the barbarians that took advantage of himself! He would never think of a young kid, boy or girl, in a sexually erotic way. They were impressionable young beings that deserved to respected, cared for, loved, in a way he never was. Heero Yuy. Heero was not a creature to be touched, no matter how much his outward appearance required, demanded it.

At lunch in the busy, bustling mess hall, Duo kept one eye on Heero as the other counselors chatted around him. Hilde, the dark-haired girl, tried vainly to flirt with him. He responded kindly with mildly flirtatious gestures of his own. She was attractive, and beautiful in a way that Duo would have been consumed by if his mind wasn't occupied with a demonic boy two tables away from his own.

Gathering the courage, Hilde inquired about his past. "What was it like growing up in the foster system?"

"It was okay," he replied, putting it mildly. In reality, he was only okay at first, before the family secrets came out. Each "family" had its own well-kept surreptitious affairs. Some worse than others. Some as vain as not wanting the neighbors to know, others turning a blind eye, deft ear, to the cries of helpless children in need of sanctuary.

Hilde continued, "I've always wanted to take in a foster kid after I have one or two of my own. Ya know, give a home to someone in need of one."

_/She'd be one of the good ones_ _./_  Duo's mind supplied. Though the "good ones" could only the handle the "bad ones" for so long, or so his experience told him.

"Just don't give up on 'em," Duo offered. Hilde's face twisted in confusion but she kept her mouth shut, not wanting to know what he could mean by such an obscure statement.

After the meal, Duo and his campers endured more art and craft tasks, most of the boys rolling their eyes and wanting something more masculine, challenging to do. The girls giggled and talked among themselves. Heero sat close to Relena, almost like he was watching over her, guarding the girl from danger.

_/He's danger./_  An ominous voice told Duo's mind, but as he watched the boy, he seemed careful, almost delicate around the blond girl.

He wanted to be wrong about the kid. His mind sufficed the reasoning that Heero held affection for the girl, and that his comment from earlier meant nothing. Just a misunderstanding.

That night, after dinner, after more "spooky" story telling, Duo led his campers to their cabins. At lights out, nine thirty, Duo closed his door and shut his blinds. Comforted by the a weird day coming to its end, which sounds both passive aggressive and condescending to the rest of his group who didn't weird him out, the braided man let his hair down, literally. Shaking the heavy braid out, Duo reveled in the sensation of his hair being freed.

He showered. Washing his mane of hair in shampoo and conditioner, Duo soaked in the heat of warm water washing over his pale flesh. The heated liquid massaged the troubles of his day away, accompanied by another marijuana joint that was kept dry by being place on an outside shelf by the shower, Duo melted under the hot river from the old, chrome shower head.

Moaning, his violet eyes fluttered open under the rivulets of water and gazed out the small window of his restroom. He gasped as his eyes made contact with blue, the blue eyes of Heero Yuy. Grabbing his towel and running out the bathroom, Duo sprinted from his cabin.

Rounding the side that his bathroom window faced, he found no one. Not a single person hiding about his cabin. Walking up the wooden steps of Cabin Weayaya, Duo peered inside. Though each bed had a lump within, he couldn't be sure that each bed was actually filled with a living, breathing body.

Sighing out of exhaustion, he determined that his mind had played a trick on him, and he walked leisurely back to his cabin, but Duo couldn't help but feel he was being watched, followed even.

_/Fuck if that kid ain't more fucked up than me./_ He thought as his pace hurried to his bunker. Slamming the door shut behind him, Duo puffed out a tight breath he didn't realize he was holding.

Falling asleep for the second night, the braided man pushed any thoughts of freaky, erotic boys from his mind.

* * *

**TBC...**


	2. Chapter 2

Camp Bleska

Chapter Two

That damn bell tolled, awaking everyone in the camp. Rubbing the crust and sleep from his eyes, Duo sat up and cracked his neck. He couldn't remember the perplexing dream from the night before, but it left him painfully aroused in the morning.

Duo exited his cabin after braiding his chestnut locks. He waited as the twelve kids lagged out of their cabins, dragging their sleepy feet. The group of thirteen sauntered over dirt, twigs, and crunching leaves to the mess hall. Heero watched Duo's back as he led the group, eyes boring between the man's shoulder blades. He desired to see his camp counselor shirtless again, like the other day at the lake shore. Spine tingling, Heero relished in the memory of the sensation of those strong arms wrapping around his torso, hefting him out of the water, and off that son of bitch Muller who pushed Marino, no, Relena.  _/She's not Mari./_ Though she had the same blue eyes and soft blond hair, she was not his sister.

Heero watched the rope of hair slink and sway against Duo's red short cladded ass. Hunger, not the craving of food, but the desire to touch and be touched made the young boys thighs tight. Oh, he knew it was wrong for him to lust after someone much too old for him, and it was lust, nothing more. The boy knew no such thing as love. He was shown no love from his parents, not his distant mother who barely spoke a lick english, not his abusive drunk father who use to come into his bedroom at night. But lust away he did, and he was going to find a way to get under the mans' skin. Introduced to sex and sexual desire at a young age warped his fragile mind, it didn't blur the lines of right and wrong, but created a lack of caring for the consequences of his actions.

In the mess hall, the blue-eyed boy munched on his breakfast of scrambled eggs, wheat toast and over cooked, crispy bacon. He sat close to the Relena girl, the only one in his group that was brave enough to approach his less than sunny disposition. Muller leaned across the table and snagged one of Relena's pieces of burnt toast.

"Hey!" She cried, "That's  _my_ food."

"What are you going to do about it, bitch?" He sneered.

Her pale cheeks flushed red, water filled her sky blue orbs, she wasn't used to having such fowl language thrown at herself. A rage boiled under the skin of the boy sitting beside her, as her friend, Dorothy, unleased a slandered upon Muller with her own viscious words in defence of her friend.

Leaning into her space, Heero whispered, "Don't cry. I'll make sure he doesn't bother you again."

She smiled at him and wiped tears from her eyes. Relena didn't understand why the others were uncomfortable around the blue-eyed boy, he was kind to her. Though he was a little intimidating, she felt a soft warmth radiate off the strange kid whenever he was close to her.

Heero left the mess hall before the rest of his group. Outside, a few other kids wandered about talking and making friends, the blue-eyed boy scoured the ground for something. A sharpened piece of jagged flint rock half buried in the dirt caught his eye. Plucking it from the ground, Heero grazed his thumb over the rough edges, appreciating the irregular coarse sides of the rock. It was perfect for what he intended to do.

As more of the kids flocked out of the mess hall, they separated into their groups to begin a two-mile hike. Duo's group was paired up with Hilde's, the collective group of twenty-four teens marched behind their counselors with backpacks full of water bottles, energy bars, and outdoor compostable toilet paper. Heero kept his eyes staked on the back of Muller's head, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Finally, the kid bent down to tie his shoe, and when he stood back up, Heero wrapped one arm around his neck, blocking his air way. Hauling the panicked boy behind a thick tree, Heero shoved his hand - rock in grasp - under Mullers' backpack, jabbing the flint into the kids spine. Muller struggled, clawing at the arm clasped around his neck, choking for oxygen. Something sharp dug into curve of his lower back, he froze in fear.

"Leave her alone," a voice whispered. He struggled again, but that thing - what is it? A knife? - pressed harder into his skin, making him whimper pathetically. "Leave her alone, or I'll fucking kill you."

Muller was shoved away and freed from his attackers strong grip. Spinning around his brown eyes fell onto the boy who had tried to drown him the day before.

"You're fucking nuts," he cried, hand rubbing the abused skin of his neck. He wanted to sounded threatening to scare the blue-eyed boy back, but his voice cracked and his lips trembled. Running quickly on weak legs to catch up with the group, Muller tried to put as much distance between himself and that fucked up kid named Heero.

Satisfied, Heero tossed the rock into the air, caught it, and placed it back in his shorts pocket. If the boy bothered Relena again, he'd make him bleed, cry for his mother like a piteous baby. Walking briskly to catch up, Heero devised a plan to separate his camp counselor from the group of people. After peeping on the man last night as he showered, Heero wanted to be up closer to the man. He had almost been caught, good for him he planned ahead and stuffed pillows under his sleeping bag so it would appear as though he was still in his bunk. All he had to do was hide in the darkness as Duo came running out to find him. He was bewitching with his hair down, doused under water, completely exposed.

Heero was enchanted from the moment he saw Duo from the bus window. He wanted him, wanted the man to touch him. Heero knew what sex was, more than any of the other thirteen year old knew about the topic. His father had taught him, and Heero seduced a Sunday school teacher in hopes he would take him away from his miserable home. That's all he wanted from the man, an escape from his diabolical father, run away from his neglectful mother, forget the memory of the sister he once had. Maybe he could try again, and successed with his handsome counselor with the magnificent violet eyes. But first, he needed to get him alone.

As he caught up with Relena, the girl turned and graced him with a wide grin, he smirked back.

"Where'd you go?" She asked.

Shrugging his shoulders, and spying the frightened Muller off by the Trant boy, Heero lied, "Had to take a leak."

Relena blushed and giggled, "Oh."

Rounding a bend where a giant tree stood, roots jutting out of the earth, an idea sparked in the young boys head. Feigning a fall, Heero collapsed to the dirt, whining loudly and clutching his ankle.

"Duo! Duo!" Relena cried, attracting the attention of both counselors. She knelt by her friend, concerned for the boy written across her delicate features. The two adults came rushing to the fallen teens side.

"What happened?" Hilde asked.

"I fell," Heero whimpered, "I twisted my ankle."

Hilde soothed the boys back as he rocked himself, gripping the "injured" foot. As Duo knelt down, Heero flashed him an insincere look of pain. The braided man eyed the boy warily, mouth screwed in an unsure frown.

"Look's fine to me, kid," Duo remarked.

Heero droned, "It's not!"

"Duo," Hilde objected, "maybe you should take him back down the trail and get 'im to the Nurse Po."

Huffing an irritated sigh, Duo nodded. "You go on and finish the hike with the others."

"'Kay," turning her back to look at the kids that had gathered around their fallen member, Hilde commanded, "Alright guys, everything's fine. Let's get a move on."

The Muller boy smirked and flipped Heero the bird. Training his facial features, Heero didn't let his ruse slip. Turning his attention back to Duo, the boy pouted.

"Can ya' walk?"

Heero shook his tousled head.

"Seriously?" Duo questioned in disbelief.

"You can carry him, Duo, you're strong," Relena asserted from behind the toppled boy.

Rolling his violet eyes, Duo placed one arm around the boys back and the other under his legs, and hefted him up. In return, Heero latched his thin arms around the braided man's neck. Resting his chin on Duo's shoulder, Heero smirked to himself as they descended the trail. Duo's nose filled with the scent of the kid, a heady masculine scent twinged with something sweet muted underneath the use of some kind of antiperspirant.

Roaming is fingers over the bump of each section of Duo's braid, Heero watched the sun light dance along the man's hair, highlighting it with pigments of red and yellow.

"Don't touch my hair," Duo warned.

Heero let his hand drop from the rope of hair. "Why do you keep it so long?"

"Because."

Running his lips over the shell of the violet eyed mans ear, Heero whispered, "That's not an answer."

Dropping the boy with a plop onto the dirt ground, Duo bellowed, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Nothing," he answered, blue eyes gazing up at him under thick, dark lashes.

"Get up. You can walk now," Duo waved at the kid.

Shaking his head, Heero denied, "No, I can't."

"Seriously, dude? You want me to carry you like a girl all the way back to camp?" Duo asked in hopes that his chastising would deter the boy.

Heero nodded, extended his tan arms, and pleaded with his eyes. Snorting aggravated, Duo pulled his braid over his shoulder, and hauled the boy up on his back, not wanting to carry his light weight frame like a bride any further.

"Thanks," Heero whispered, inflicting the same tickling tease he had just committed.

Duo jerk his head away, and growled between clenched teeth, "Don't do that."

He didn't want that kind, or any kind of contact from Heero. And the obvious flirtation made him grit his teeth, annoyed that the tone of the kids voice made the muscles in his stomach tense and a shudder rock his bones. He tried not to think about how soft the boys flesh was where his hands looped under his bended knees. Duo tried not look at the slender arms wrapped under his chin, lissome hands dangling. Attempted to ignore the fact that every bounce had the boys groin undulating against the small of his back.  _/Should have just carried him like a bride to fucking be./_

Luckily for Duo, they hadn't gotten far on the hike and the two were rounding the corner to the campsite.

As they got closer to the Nurses station behind the mess hall, Heero grazed his fingers over Duo's right pec, teasing a nipple, tightened his thighs hold on the mans swaying waist, pulling himself flush against Duo's back, nudging his half erect cock up on the man. Duo grinded his teeth together, just a little ways further and he could be rid of the sexually charged teen. If he could, he'd toss the boy to the ground and run for the hills. He didn't need this kind of temptation, the job didn't pay him enough to ward off a wickedly beautiful boy.

Entering the Nurses station, Duo helloed the blond nurse with swirling braids framing her face.

"Well, what've we got here?" Sally Po asked.

"Hey Sally," Duo greeted, and plopped the parasite from his back onto the doctors table. Heero glared up at him. "Kids' got a busted ankle."

"Is that right, sweetheart? Here, let's get them shoes off," Sally advised unlacing the boys shoe.

Duo paced back and forth in the cramped room, eyes drilling into the vacant blues. Heero refused to cease his hold on those irresolute violet orbs. He had succeeded in unnerving the man, and the curiosity held underneath the uncertainty told Heero he had a chance, a chance at claiming the man for himself.

As the nurse worked on removing his sock of his "injured" foot, Heero leaned back on his palms behind his back, and spread his legs a little wider open. Duo's eyes narrowed at the subtle erotic display the boy created. He knew, he fucking knew this was all a ploy concocted by unhinged kid. Biting his thumbnail, Duo wished to be away from Heero.

"Well, Heero, your ankle seems fine," Sally said, gently looking over his foot. "No bruising, no swelling. Should be okay to walk on."

She offered to wrap it up, but Heero declined, claiming to feel much better. As they left Sally, Duo realized that he was stuck with the kid. Couldn't catch back up with the others, he had to wait for their return in the company of one Heero Yuy, who was walking behind him just fine. As the two approached the cabins, Duo turned and stated, "I don't know what to do 'til everyone gets back."

Heero shrugged. "We could wait in your cabin," he suggested.

"Ha, no, I don't think so," Duo rejected.

"Why not?"

"Because I know what you're tryin' to do," clarified Duo.

Letting his body relax and slack to the left, Heero cockily asked, "And what am I trying to do?"

"You're tryin' to...you're messin' with me," he accused, and resumed his irritated pacing.

"We can go into my cabin," Heero offered, watching the braided man walk back and forth.

"Nope, that ain't gonna fly either," Duo seethed, picking up a stick. Walking to the shoreline, Duo sat in the sand, pulled out a swiss army knife, and proceeded to cut away at the twig, sharpening it to a point. Heero sat close by, watching the shards of woodchips fly off the stick.

"Ya going to kill something with that?" the boy asked.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. A squirrel or something."

Confessing without realizing it, Duo answered, "I don't kill animals anymore."

That perked Heero's interest. "Anymore?"

Pausing in mid swipe, Duo realized he divulged more than he wanted to. He didn't say anything.

"Biggest animal I ever killed was a cat," Heero continued. "It was a mean son of a bitch, ugly black thin-"

"How'd you kill it?" Duo interjected, keeping his eyes on the task at hand.

Kicking the sand at his feet, Heero nonchalantly professed, "Grab it up in a pillow sack. Took it to a creek and drowned it."

Duo reflected back on the time he tortured a rat by setting it on fire. "Why'd you do it?"

"Because I wanted to."

"Why?" He knew the reasons why. To act out the violence witnessed, experienced, or just to do it for the sake of doing it.

"Because all things die," Heero murmured. "And I wanted to watch it happen."

"Did you like it?"

Heero shrugged, not sure how to answer. He knew the proper reply would be a swift "no" because normal people didn't hurt or kill animals just because they wanted to. But he was far from normal, that he knew. Although, being sexually subjected and abused by his father, and knowing his behavior was wrong, especially where it concerned adults, didn't make Heero want or stive to change. Did he  _like_  killing the cat and the other animals he victimized? He wasn't sure. Really he did it to take out his own pent up aggression, to make someone, something else feel the pain he felt. He desperately wanted to terrorize another with the parts that made him male like his father had started doing to him at the age of six, but his attaction to older men didn't allow him to have much power over them. Except in the way of making said men want him in an unhealthy, carnal way.

Reclusive in nature, Heero stuck his nose in books, kept himself away from others; besides the other kids knew there was something wrong with him, they had heard the rumors about his alcoholic father. Reading limited information on the subject, Heero learned the text-book definitions between psychopaths and sociopaths. He wasn't sure which one he was, if either. Yes, he acted out violently. Yes, he manipulated people to achieve his selfish goals. Sure his childhood lacked nurture. His mother a foreigner in a strange country. His father a small town sheriff with a dark desire for the flesh of boys between the ages of six to eleven.

For a long time, Heero blamed himself. Thought it was his fault that his father came sauntering drunkenly into his bedroom at night. Figured it was his fault when he "out grew" his fathers taste, which only left him to be beaten by the man for the most miniscule reasons. Heero knew he was different, not just emotionally but psychically, which he thought was the reason why his father singled him out. Born half caucasian, half Japanese, Heero looked nothing like his peers in the rural Ashtabula County, Ohio. The county was filled with full bred whites, a few blacks, and even fewer Asian and Native Americans. A black and white mix was rare and treated badly, a white and asian mix was treated worse. Growing up in the midst of the Vietnam War and the after math hatred of Japanese from World War II found Heero - with his obscure name - at the end of ceaseless bullying. "China-man", "Chink", "Veit-cong" was thrown at the young boy before he even knew what the terms meant. All he knew was that those words were bad. He was bad. Bad for being what he was; different. Bad for being born into the family that he was. Bad for everything that made him,  _him._

The constant bad made the boy want to do bad. Avenge himself on creatures too defenseless to ward him off. Find vindication and express the evil learned behavior he had been taught. Exampled to him, deceit and wrong doing had no negative consequences. His father dragged him back to a dark bedroom even as he screamed, cried for his mother. Said "parent" did nothing. She never did anything. Never tried to save him, comfort him, soothe his tortured, battered body. She sure as hell didn't defend Marino. His sister. His three-year old sister. He couldn't save her either. Didn't know she died alone until he found her. He didn't, couldn't forgive himself.

Did all that make him a psycho? A sociopath? Maybe. He couldn't be sure.

Deep down, under all the hurt, under the pain, under the anger dwelled a sensitive soul desiring escape, needing rescue. A fragile being on the break of becoming some kind of soceital monster. Deprived of care, nurture, love, Heero stood centered on a balance beam, one side weighed with the cruel hand he been dealt, the other swayed with needs of every normal human; shelter, care, love. He couldn't comprehend that his learnt obtrusive sexual behavior might land him in the hands of more devious demon than the one he been born into.

Though Heero didn't know what attracted him to Duo, the braided man knew. Knew they shared a traumatic consanguineous past. Though he didn't remember his Pa, Duo knew he was a bad man from his mothers storytelling. Knew he had done something bad to himself to make his mother leave him, run from him, flee to save her only child. But at the moment, Duo had no discerning idea of what his strong pull to the depraved boy was. He had been saved by the help of a unorthox high school psychiatrist. Could the boy beside him be saved as well? An overwhelming side of him told him to reach out, save the kid from whatever faced him. But another side told him not to go near, don't engage the boy, he'll only bring you down.  _/You're greatest downfall faces you./_  That ominous voice proclaimed loudly in his head, but yet, he couldn't move away from the heavenly creature. That is, until he moved too close.

Scooting across the sand, Heero's hip connected with Duo's. He was about to say something, but the braided man shifted away, adding more distant between them.

Duo was lying to himself. Telling himself he wanted to be as far away from the boy as physically possible, but the sick part of his mind wanted to clutch the blue-eyed cretin by the neck, throw him down on the sandy beach and rip his clothes off. His sadistic side wanted to eat the lithe boy alive. No, he didn't want to kill him or cause him everlasting physical pain, only wanted that to deceitful creature to call out his name in want, need, ecstasy. Flashes of what the kid might look like restrained and begging in his lecherous way flooded Duo's mind in brief, repressed glimpses.

Through the violet eyed man's tumultuous past, Duo strived to better than the demons that surrounded him. For a short while in his youth he succumbed to the evil within. Frogs were his favorite victims, pouring salt on their severed, skin stripped muscles made them twitch in false animated life. Through his darkness, a dim light shone through, begging to be recognized, accepted. That unconventional high school counselor that strived to be so much more, saved him. Pulled him from the depths of being some kind of God of Death. He had been on the brink of becoming a full-blown psychopath, a deviant that prayed on the flesh of the weak. Only between cotton sheets, with the conscent of the other would the demon surface, come out and play.

They were drawn to each other without understanding the complex reasons behind it. But Duo would continue to futilely deny that invisible pull, while Heero would presistently tug, and yank on it until the man succumbed.

The two sat on the shore for a long while. Heero vainly trying to keep Duo talking. The man ignoring him, shaving away at stick until it snapped in two.

"Look, kid," Duo grumbled, "I ain't your friend, and I don't wanna be your friend. So, just shut up."

"I'm not trying to make you friend asshole," Heero seethed. "Don't have any friends anyways."

Heero tried to not let the undercurrent of hurt sound out loud, but Duo heard it. Rubbing his hands over his face, massaging his brow and temples, Duo sighed. He didn't want to feel sorry for the kid.

"Ain't that pretty blond Relena your friend?" Duo asked.

Heero shrugged. "Maybe. I just don't want anyone bothering her."

"Why?"

"Because, she's good," Heero reasoned.

That put Duo's mind at ease about the strange boy being around Milliardo's sister. Hopefully Heero wasn't singling her out for some kind of "special" treatment. No,  _he_ was Heero's prey, that was obvious.

Eventually all the groups came back from their hikes, tired and hungry. Relieved, Duo stood and made his way over to Hilde. Heero watched with angry blue eyes as Duo and the dark-haired woman chatted, laughed, and exchanged simple flirtatious gestures. A playful wink, a gentle stoke along an arm, closing in what little distance remained between them. Duo could feel the weight of the boys gaze on him like a tangible thing. The braided man was purposefully flirting with the other camp counselor in hopes it would deter the anomalous boy sitting in the sand.

The man's tactics had the opposite effect of what he hoped for. Heero glared at the woman, and he came to the conclusion that if she was to be an obsticle then he would find a way to remover her from the equation.

Relena came and sat by Heero, crossed her legs and poked at the sand with the tips of her delicate fingers, drawing swirling lines in the surface. She was quiet for a moment before her face screwed in confusion.

"What?" Heero asked, sensing the confusion in her frame.

"What's a fag?" She asked.

Heero chuckled, "Where'd you hear that?"

"Muller said Duo's a fag 'cause he's got all that hair, and he said you were a fag too. What's it mean?" She asked, head tilted comically to the side.

"Don't you worry about that. Did he bother you at all?"

She shook her blond head.

The exhausted hikers were given a half hour of reprieve before they were corralled into the mess hall for lunch. As everyone began walking away from the shoreline, Heero hung back, watched Duo and the woman, Hilde, disappear into the dining area. Once alone, Heero made his way into his counselors' cabin. There was no lock on the door, so breaking in wasn't so much as breaking in as it was just pushing the door open.

Half way through the lunch hour, Duo observed the unusual boy walk into the mess hall. He didn't get a plate of food, just sat by his "maybe" friend.

The rest of the day Duo was relieved from the boy. He had no further direct interactions with him. The kid didn't seek him out, only kept himself hovering over Relena like a shadow. Enjoying the company of Hilde, and Wufei, the violet eyed man got to know his co-workers more. They engaged in friendly banter, and gossiped about the campers in their groups. Duo didn't mention the enigmatic Heero in effort of putting the boy far, far from his mind.

"Yeah, this kid Ken Tubarov I have is a real piece of work," complained Wufei. "Smart mouth idiot with a freakishly large nose."

"Well I hear someone's got a real nutcase in one of our groups, but I don't know which kid it is," Hilde stated with smirk, eyebrows bouncing.

"What kind of nutcase?" Duo asked, his eyes flashed through the bonfire, landing on Heero.

"Some kind of a schizoid or something," the female counselor laughed.

The camp President Howard eavesdropped on their conversation. Tonight, he had handed over the nightly story telling over to Milliardo. "She's in your group, Duo," Howard added, leaning into their discussion.

"What? Seriously?"

"Yup," pointing to a girl with brown hair, Howard reveled, "Her. Name's Annie Une. She's got schizophrenia, but her mum assured me the girl's medicated. You shouldn't have a problem with her."

 _/Great, I got two freaks under my watch./_  Duo complained mentally.

Nine thirty rolled around, and the kids were sent back to their cabins. Duo continued his nightly ritual of rolling a joint. As he smoked, he rifled through his vinyl records and opted to play his newest addition. "Please Please Me" by some band in England came out in the spring of the previous year. He swayed to the low playing music as he continued increasing his high.

Eyeing his dresser, Duo noticed something sitting by the record player that he hadn't pulled out of the chest at the end of his bed. A Polaroid camera. The one he purchased a few months back. Picking it up, Duo turned it in his grasp, inspecting the item. Looking about the rest of his small room, nothing else was out of place. Duo gently placed the Polaroid camera back down where he found it, confusion and uncertainty making him nervous. He knew there was no lock on his cabin door; anyone could have come in and messed with his stuff, but only one person came to mind. Heero.

If it had been the kid, then why didn't he take anything? Though there was nothing of extreme value to take, except his records, but even those held more sentimental value to Duo. Dismissing the entire strange episode, and the uneasy, anxious feelings it brought on; Duo put out his doobie out in an ashtray and turned off the music.

Killing the lights, Duo undressed and laid on his bed in the nude. The summer night was warm, stifling hot. He wanted something to wet his whistle with, something alcoholic preferably. He did have a bottle of whiskey in his chest but he wasn't in the mood for something so strong. Futilely, he attempted to fall asleep ontop of the covers.

As his mind lingered between that limbo of half awake and half asleep, Duo allowed his mind to wander. At first he thought of his mother. Her violet eyes like his own, and how she always smelled of something sweet, something floral. Slowly his thoughts changed gear. Arousing images of his sexual encounters. His first girl friend, who broke up with him after the time he tried to choke her as they fucked. The first boyfriend who was the first boy he penetrated, took. He later beat Duo to a pulp with the rest of the baseball team when rumors of the two being together spread like wild-fire around the school.

Duo began to touch himself. Caress his testicles, stroke his cock. As his self pleasure heightened, Duo reached his free hand under the pillow to add more comfort to his head. But underneath, his hand came in contact with something that made a crinkling sound.  _/What the.../_  Pulling what he thought was a piece of paper out from under the pillow, the thickness of the item told him it wasn't paper like, and not paper at all. Bringing it to his face, he stared at the back of a square Polaroid picture. Flipping it to the image side, Duo was faced with a snapshot of a boy. A boy with tan skin, deep blue eyes, the kind of blue that you can see at the pit of a flame, at its hottest temperature. One arm strewn over his forehead, brushing back dark locks of silky hair. A shirtless torso exposing taut, soft muscle, hardened dusky nipples, the top of a V-shape where his hips bones jutted out. The picture of was taken of the boy laying across Duo's bed, ending below the belly button and above the most tempting part of all.

Duo tossed the picture on the floor. It fluttered helplessly to the floor, landing upside down beneath his bed. It heightened his arousel even though he wished it didn't. He vigorously pushed himself to the finish, hand flying over his weeping cock. Cumming, Duo grunted through gritted teeth. Flashes of a boy too young flickering through his mind.

He whispered, cum cooling on his stomach, "Fuck..."

* * *

**TBC...**


	3. Chapter 3

Camp Bleska

Chapter 3

Day four of fifty six and Duo found himself waking up before the morning bell. The morning sun outside shone brightly through slitted cracks of his plastic window blinds. Hot air filtered through the screen door, and the braided man cursed himself for falling asleep on top of the sheets completely naked.  _/Why do summers have to be so goddamn hot?/_  He asked himself as he pulled a thin off-white sheet over his midsection.

In attempt to lull himself back to sleep, Duo tried to remember the dream he had, but nothing came to mind. He had slept with his subconscious in complete darkness, no confusing images, no vivid memories, no meaning behind abstract unconscious thought. But as he strived to recollect, his mind supplied the actions he took out before passing out. Masturbation and self loathing. He almost forgot the latter until the memory of the photograph fluttered through his mind.

Violet eyes snapping open, Duo rolled himself to the left side edge of the bed and ran his hand over the wood plank floor.  _/Where is it?/_  He knew he hadn't imagined the picture, it had been real. Reaching desperately under the bed, his fingers grazed the ninety degree angle of a thick piece of paper. Dragging it by his nails, Duo swipped the picture along the floor. Once in his grasp, the man pulled it up to his face, and sure enough - though he wished it to be a figment of his imagination - there it was. A snapshot of the erotic boy.

Sitting up, Duo gazed at the picture.  _/Goddamn.../ a_ voice whispered in his head. The boys beauty was astonishing. Too beautiful for his own good. Crinkling the image in his fist, Duo wanted to tear it up and toss it in a trashcan, but...But something pulled his arm back slowly, unclenched his fingers from around the white frame Polaroid, smoothed out the wrinkles he just created with the thumb of his right hand. His eyes softened as he took in the features of the boy again, not in a lustful way, though the feeling hid underneath it all. Those fiery blue half lidded eyes held a Jekyll and Hyde effect. One side empty, deceptive, malicious. The other needy, scared, and deprived. The boy was a warfield of mixed contradictories.

Scooting to the end of his bed, Duo opened the hard wood chest and hid the picture between two books, a Bible and Charles Dickens  _The Adventures of_   _Oliver Twist_.

Forgiving up on sleep, Duo showered, washing off the heat of the night in exchange for new sweat of the day to come. He sighed dramatically many times at the thought of being in the same company as the blue-eyed devil. Or maybe he wasn't a devil, but an angel, sent to destroy his wretched soul. No, the boy was no innocent creature. He was definitely a demon cast upon him to tempt and pull him into the devils' thorny grasp.

Twisting the metal knob, the water ceased its flow. Duo stood, wet hair plastered to his back like a second skin. A feeling of despondency washed over his prickling, goosebumped flesh. How in the hell was he suppose to make it past fifty-two more days around this boy? It was the ultimate trial to prove his strength over the other and not succumb and  _take_  the boy.

Duo shook off the negative energy and proceeded to get ready for the day. By the time he had finished getting dressed the morning bell tolled. He sat on the porch of his cabin and waited for the teens to come out for breakfast. As his living breathing nightmare walked out of Cabin Weayaya, Duo groaned internally, seeing a smug smirk play on those lush full lips.

Heero knew the man had found the gift he had left for him. It was a token of his affection, a gift to tempt, to harass. He felt good knowing he held a small victory over the violet eyed man, though he was exhausted himself. The previous night, he couldn't sleep. Heero kept himself busy with vigorous self pleasure, almost waking his "roommates". He knew boys his age touched themselves, but not the way he did. They didn't touch themselves  _there_ , they sure as hell didn't do until they were sore, too uncomfortable to keep going. Sometimes he wished he could stop but it was like a compulsion, a ridiculous need created from the abuse he had been given at the hand of Odin, his father.

Heero attempted to keep his deeds a secret as he carried them out, hiding in one of the three pale shower stalls. He pushed himself to climax three times before he allowed himself to climb into his bed, wearing old dirty underwear, skin mostly soaked from the heated water of the shower head. As the teen drifted off to sleep, he pulled a small stuffed bear from under his bed. The bear that had belonged to his sister. Its fur was tattered and burnt in some areas, but brown altogether. One button eye missing, the other dangling from black thread that threatened to fall off completely. It was all he had left of her. He didn't even own a picture.

Sometimes he wonder which hurt more, being raped by his dad, or loosing the only sibling he ever had. It was a tough call, but Heero knew he would have chosen to endure years more of abuse if it would have saved her. Though her death was shrouded in mystery, he still felt the burden of responsibility for not being there.

In the mess hall Heero stuck close to Relena, not at all caring for her boisterous, overly developed friend named Dorothy.

"Why do you hang around that freak so much?" the forked eye brow girl asked her friend while sneering at the boy.

Relena slammed her fork down. "Don't call him that!"

"Oh, you  _like_ him don't cha?" she teased.

"He's my friend," Relena defended. "So leave him alone!"

"Why? He's a freak," Dorothy declared, turning her attention to said boy, she taunted him. "You're a freak, aren'tcha freak?"

Heero glared at the girl, wishing she was a boy so he could beat her up later. If she pushed him hard enough, he would hurt her somehow. He didn't care about the gender discrepancies so much. If she fucked with him, she would surely regret it soon.

Relena placed her hand over Heero's. "Don't listen to her. She just likes to be mean."

The gentle touch pacified his anger. Lacing his fingers with hers, he smirked. She grinned back at him, and he didn't quite understand what that gesture meant to a twelve-year-old, conservative girl. Her heart fluttered as her cheeks tinted a light shade of pink. Yes, she was enamored with the dark-haired boy.

Duo watched from the counselors table as the two teenagers intertwined their fingers. A spark of hope rang in his chest that the boy would set his sights on someone else. That same spark created a twinge of jealous, strong disliking for the blond girl who seemed to ease the beast so easily. What was so special about her? He didn't know. Pushing aside that tumultuous feeling, Duo re-engaged himself in the conversation going on around him.

After the meal, all the kids, all the teens under the six counselors' watch - all seventy-two in total - were instructed on how to play a game of Blob Tag by their funky camp president. According to the rules, two kids started as "it", hands joined, and they had to run about in tandem to catch others. Once they captured two more, their group could separate into two groups of two, always joined at the hands - the "blob" - to catch more kids. The game proceeded that way, no odd number groups of "it" could split into a smaller group. And boundaries were set for the areas they couldn't cross. The last two people untagged where the "it" couple for the next round.

Not wanting to participate, Heero wandered off between the trees after the game was commenced, making sure no one noticed his disappearance. As he marched through the tall trees, sunlight skimming between open branches, Heero found himself among a quiet wooded area. Sitting at the base of a large pine, the boy waited, bored and in need of some sort of amusement. A small squirrel skirted about a log a few yards away from him. Eyeing it, he pulled out his saved flint from the day before, and tossed it. It hit close to the critter, but missed. The squirrel skimpered away.

Sighing in defeat, the boy got up on his feet to retrieve the rock, but the sound of approaching footsteps crunching on fallen leaves stopped him.

"Whadda ya doin' here?" Muller asked as he spotted Heero between the trees. He had seen the boy wander off and decided to follow, with back up of course. His buddy Trant and Thaddeus Davis (i.e. this is "Manager" who has no real name from Trowa's circus.) followed his lead into the forest to hunt down the damned boy who threatened to kill him the other day.

When Heero didn't respond, the boy went on. "Hey psycho," Muller jibed, "What's a faggot like you doin' out here?" His two allies snickered behind him.

"I don't like that word," Heero warned.

"What word?" Trant asked.

"Oh, he don't like being called a fag, do ya cocksucker?" Thaddeus chimed in.

"I don't think he knows what the word means, Thad," Muller teased.

"Do ya know what fag means, faggot?" Thaddeus asked his unsuspecting cabin mate.

An inferno lit under Heero's skin, increasing his bodily temperature, making him want to lash out.

The three boys sauntered towards him, stalking him like he was cornered prey. He was out numbered, obviously, but Heero didn't give a damn. Just as the three teens swayed too close, Heero was about to unleash his rage, attack Muller and beat his face to a pulp as quickly as he could before his friends fought him off. But someone interfered.

Duo Maxwell came stomping out of the forest trees, brows furrowed in a glare, braid swinging like a whip, mouth screwed in a snarl.

"What do you think you're doing?" He growled at the four boys.

None of them answered, but three stared in shock. Duo had seen Heero walk off, but didn't stop him since he knew the kid would be fine on his own, but when the others followed, he became concerned. Not for Heero, but for the others. They didn't understand the kind of person they were taunting.

Finally, Thad caved. "We were just messing around."

"Sure you were," Duo argued. "Get back to the site."

He scowled at the three contrite boys as they walked past him, dragging their feet. His false anger lifted as Heero sauntered by. He couldn't fake the feeling with those deep, all-knowing eyes on him. Though his gaze softened, it fell into an unreadable façade that no one, not even Heero could decipher.

Heero wordlessly thanked Duo for his interference with a nod, he knew he wasn't strong enough to fight off three assailants, but he was going to attempt it anyways. Starting with that punk ass bitch, Muller.

Brushing the top of his shoulder against the mans bicep, Heero smirked to himself as he felt the violet eyed man shiver reluctantly. Turning to walk backwards, Heero again caught Duo's eyes, lifted on arm to graze his own forehead, pushing back his bangs. The half assed scene in recreation of the picture he had taken of himself the night before, but adding physical sway as he continued pacing backwards. Spinning to face forward, Heero chuckled at the look of repressed longing that echoed in violet orbs.

Frustrated, Duo kicked about the dirt for a couple of minutes. Finding a sharpened piece of flint, he picked it up. A grey and white bird cooed from a low hanging branch, Duo flung the flint with all his might, knocked the bird on the side of its head. Marching up to the fallen animal, Duo picked the flint rock back up and peered down unfeeling at the twitching critter. Which was more cruel? To leave the bird to die slowly or stomp its life out? Pulling his arm back, Duo unleashed his full pent-up anger into one single punch and crushed the doves fragile skull.

Inhaling a deep breath of pine scented fresh air through his nose, an insidious side of Duo breathed new life, but the rest of him fell into a depression for reverting back to what he had once been, for letting his emotions get the better of him. Turning his back on the dead, blood soaked bird, the braided man made his way back to the playing kids.

After the game of tag, the kids made more arts and crafts. Learned how to weave colorful blankets, read a map, make friendship bracelets. Lunch was served, the mess hall again filled with the noise of happy kids enjoying a summer vacation away from home. Relena tied a bracelet around Heero's wrist half way through their meal. The colored beads read, heart shape "BBF" heart shape "4EVA" heart shape, on green twine. He smiled at her, genuinely warmed by her gift and gave her the one he made, which didn't have any specific word on it. Red string with the letters "12345" followed by "XYZ". She gave him a funny look but took the bracelet anyways.

After the meal, the campers dressed in their swimwear and fitted themselves into a Sioux style war canoe. Most canoe's sat two, maybe three people, but a war canoe could fit as many as twenty individuals. Twelve teens sat in one, floating on the water as their counselor pushed them from the dock. A brown hair girl named Annie didn't feel good about being on the open water. Something bad was gonna happen. But she told herself it was just her crazy mind playing tricks on her.

Getting his group to row in uniform, Duo turned his attention to the open water before him, rowing at the head of the canoe. Consumed by the beauty mother nature could create, he lost himself in a serene kind of apathy. Not caring for what he was doing, or what was going on around him, the braided man lost himself. Until a loud splash rang behind him, louder than the splash of a paddle smacking the water's surface.

Heero found himself seated between Muller and another boy he didn't know. He tried to stick close to Relena but her friends Dorothy and Sylvia took the spots in front and behind her. Out on the lake, a good distance away from the shore, Heero felt two hands clasp him by the shoulders and push him over board. At first he wasn't scared, he could swim, but a thick wooden paddle knocked him up side the head, disorienting him under the water.

Discombobulated, Heero saw the light moving surface and the dark murky depths, but couldn't decipher which way to swim or kick, as he flailed under the water. His lungs tightened with the human need to breathe, fill his lungs with oxygen, deprived of essential essence. Twirling under the water's surface, on the brink of inhaling a lung full of water, Heero felt an arm snake around his waist and heave him in an undefinable direction.

Breaking surface, the boy gasped need breaths' of air, clutching the person who brought him up in hope of survival. He wasn't trying to drag the person down with him, though his actions spoke such desperate need.

Duo kept one arm warped around the boys chest as he hauled him up to the surface, free hand clamped to the side of the canoe. The boys lissome hands flew in the air, nails clawing and scratching at his face, neck and arms. Pulling the teen close to his chest, he yelled, "Calm down. I got chu."

Heero kept thrashing about until he heard the words, heard that voice.

Once the boy let his body go slack in the water, Duo swam with the both of them to the front of the canoe. The braided man instructed the kids to hold onto Heero as he lifted himself back into the make shift boat, and then yanked the placid boy out of the water. He adjusted the teen to lay against his chest, legs stretched out. The kid was pale, panting on him, eyes dead.

Placing a hand over the kids thundering heart, Duo soothed the boy by whispering, "You'll be alright,"'s and "You're okay"'s and "I've got you"'s.

As he and the rest of his crew quickly made their way to the dock, Duo kept placating the boy. Running his hand over his taut shirt soaked chest, Duo kept reciting his calming words. Pressing his hand down hard on the boys chest, Duo demanded the boy look at him. Blue eyes flickered to his violet, seeing but unseeing.

"Heero," Duo whispered, "You're going to be okay."

The only recognition he got was those blazing blue eyes softening, heart rate relaxing under his palm. Knowing it might be wrong, Duo placed his paddle in the boat and wrapped both arms around the boy, and squeezed him tightly.

Lifting his feeble limb, Heero placed his hands over Duo's. "Please don't let me go," he pleaded softly.

Duo knew that statement held more than what was actually said, but he responded anyways, "I won't let you go. You're safe here with me."

And with that, Heero released any and all grips he had on his surroundings, falling into oblivion, falling into unconsciousness.

Close enough to shore, Duo hefted the kid into his arms, jumped from the boat, and waded through waist-high water to the shoreline.

"You guys get out of the canoe and sit on the dock until I get back!" Duo ordered. "Relena, go get Nurse Po. NOW!"

The blond girl took off in a dead sprint, fearing her friend's life. She had never witnessed such an accident, and feared the matter was life or death for the cute, young Heero.

Kicking the screen door open, Duo laid Heero down gently on his bed. Smacking the kids cheek lightly, the violet eyed man got the boy to wake up.

Eyes fluttering, Heero took in his surroundings and remember what had happened. Duo watched as his face twisted into an angry scowl, blue eyes demanding revenge. He couldn't blame the boy for what his mind was already concocting, but tried to persuade him otherwise. Though he hadn't seen what had happened, Duo knew Muller sat behind him, was most obviously the person that threw Heero overboard.

"Don't hurt him," Duo told Heero. "If you retaliate with violence you'll get your ass sent back home. Do you want that? You wanna go home?"

Fright field the orbs he peered down in. Well now, Duo realized the boys' biggest fears included his home. Was it a horrible foster home like the one's he experienced? Or was the home he'd been born into? Who hurt him? From the way he acted, Duo deduced it was whatever kind of father figure he had. Duo himself had been abused at the hands of "fathers", and one sadistic bible thumping "mother". His birth mother had been kind, caring, loving. He missed her dearly. He had watched from between the crack of a door, trembling and crying silently as her most recent boyfriend cracked her skull with repeated blows from a frying pan. After that, any mother or father was just false title given to people who wanted extra money from the government.

"Don't hurt him," Duo repeated, trying to get through to the water-soaked boy on his bed. It may be vain, but he had to try.

Heero nodded his head in surrender, agreement.

Nurse Po came busting through the door, scared out of her wits from the description she had received from terrified Peacecraft girl. At the boy's side, she looked him over, calmed her own nerves, and was pleased that he was just fine. A little shocked, but fine. She ordered Duo to take a break, the man was clearly shaken up, trembling, pallor indicating his panic, his eyes wide.

Duo accepted her offer, excused himself to wander about the forest in hopes of calming his distressed nerves. She and Howard would look after his group until he returned.

Surrounded by nothing but trees, Duo allowed his urge to vomit happen. Bending at the waist, one hand on his knee, the other resting against the rough bark of a tree, Duo heaved his stomach contents. Shakily he sat down a few yards away from his puddle of puke. Trying desperately to take solace in the fact that he saved the boy - though his mind refused to stop the images of his mother dying - Duo strived to find some kind of inner peace, comfort. He refused to admit that the whole reason for his anguish was because of  _who_  was attacked. As he sat in the dirt, Duo punched the ground with quick swift blows, needing an outlet for his perplexing sentiments. Wishing vehemently for someone to take his vengeance out on, the braided man continued to batter the earth's dirt surface until his energy drained, fist ached. All he could hope for was that the boy listened to his pleas, not act out his evil intentions, though he wouldn't blame him if he did.

Relaxing after the incident, Heero tried to no avail to circumvent his rage. Revenge was necessary, a physical need to not be the "victim" in any way, shape or form ever again. Retribution would be had, if only he could figure a way to do it non-violently like Duo had requested of him.

Smirking to himself, he found what he thought would be a hilarious form of retaliation to act upon.

At dusk, Duo found his way back to the camp in time for dinner. He ate quietly as his co-workers asked questions about the skirmish they heard about, only answering with short phrases.

The next "incident" didn't occur until after the story telling. Duo had been sitting against a closed toilet seat in his bathroom when a knock echoed through his wood cabin. Frustrated, he stubbed out his joint on the side porcelain counter top of the sink and stalked to the screen door.

Spying five boys on the other side of the mesh, Duo figured Heero had finally achieved his revenge, dealt out some kind of abuse in reenactment of what had been done to him. But...but the Muller boy was there, standing unharmed and very pissed off.

"What's going on?" He asked, stopping at the threshold of door. The infuriated glares he was delivered almost made him laugh. Looks like the boy wrought his vengeance in a pain-free way after all.

Gathering Howard, the camp counselor and the camp president entered Cabin Weayaya, passing by a dubiously smirking boy with dark brown hair.

Closing his nostrils, pinched between his thumb and fore finger, Duo tried to not gag or laugh. Howard on the other hand, burst into a fit of laughter, the stench consuming his senses. Yanking back the comforter of the third bed on the right side of the room, Howards' laughter made the old man double over. There, in the bed, was a dead salmon.

"Oh man," Howard chuckled, quickening his pace to the screen door. "That's a riot! I mean, if you're gonna get back at someone, what better way than to shove a nasty dead fish in their bed!"

Shirt over his nose, Duo tried not to laugh along with him, inhaling more of the stank. "I'm glad you find this so funny," he enamored, nose plugged making his voice pitch in a comical way.

"Hell yeah it's funny!" The camp president cheered. "Get the kid to clean his bed and get 'em to sleep."

After learning about the episode on the water, Howard could find no fault with the Heero boy seeking retribution. The boys always seemed to cause more of a ruckus than the girls. Dismissing the matter as "boys will be boys", Howard didn't see the need to punish the prankster. Besides they couldn't know for sure who had done it. Too much hearsay.

Duo stood watch as Muller ripped the sheets from his bed. He didn't think he should be the one to clean the mess, it wasn't his. The boy tossed the sheets in an outdoor trashcan, and received new ones from his camp counselor.

Leaving the boys cabin, Duo winked and smiled at Heero. Smiling in return, Heero bit his lip to stop from grinning out right. Chuckling, Duo walked to his cabin, but was cut short when a thin hand grasped his wrist with more force than expected. Looking down at the boy, Duo wondered how he moved so quickly and quietly, it was like he was a floating phantom.

"I want to thank you," Heero whispered.

"There's no nee-" Duos' statement broke off as the teen used his free hand to grope Duo through his red shorts. "Fuck off!" He seethed, but Heero flexed his fingers around the man's cock, stroked it, delighted in the weight of it.

"I know how to please you," Heero teased, rolling his middle and ring fingers over the head of dick clutched in his grip. His own shaft flooded with blood, loins heating with tension.

Cock hardening, Duo shoved the boy away violently, forcing the kid to land on the ground. "Don't touch me," Duo growled.

From the ground, Heero dragged his heels along the dirt, spread his legs wantonly and flashed a wicked grin. Making a disgusted sound, Duo backed way from the indecent demonstration, and briskly walked to his cabin.

Lifting himself from the dirt, Heero brushed himself off and jogged back to his cabin. His smile spread when his eyes landed on Muller, the boy glared at him from his clean bed. He may have clean sheets, but Heero laughed internally at the thought of his nemesis sleeping in the bed he had stank up with a dead fish. Bearing teeth, Muller dragged his index finger along his throat, signaling that the war between them was far from over.

After showering alone in the bathroom - Heero refused to bathe with others in there even though mustard curtains separated each stall. Towel wrapped around his waist, the teen peered through the bathroom window which had his counselors cabin in its direct sight. Running a hand over the fogged glass, he spied Hilde standing outside Duo's door. The violet eyed man opened it, leaned against the frame and smiled at her. They spoke briefly before the two disappeared inside. Heero's lips formed a thin line, resentment and envy making his blood boil. Possessiveness made his clenched fists shake. He was going to have to do something about her, that woman, Hilde. She was in his way.

Another knock on his door made Duo groan in annoyance, fling his head back and roll his eyes.  _/Jesus Christ on a stick!/_  He was trying to read and just fucking relax, forget about being fondled by the sexually charged Heero. Through the door, he saw the figure of a woman.

"Hey Hilde," Duo greeted, pushing the door open. "What can I do for you?"

"Let me in?" She chuckled.

"Sure pretty lady, make yourself at home."

Sitting cross-legged on his bed, Hilde smile up at the violet eyed man who leant against his dresser, arms crossed over his board chest. A few moments of awkward silence past between the two camp counselors. Picking up the book on the bed, Hilde asked, "Oliver Twist? Interesting choice. Like the classical novels, huh?"

Swiping the hardcover from her hands, he laughed nervously. If she found his "bookmark" he'd be in one hell of a mess. Not wanting to bend the top corners of the pages, Duo decided to use the photograph of Heero as his page marker. "Yeah, fan of Dickens in particular," he admitted, rapping the book cover with his fist. Seeking a diversion, he pushed the book to the end of his dresser, and showed her his record collection.

The two listened to music for a while, chatted about the days events, even shared a joint. As they got more comfortable, Duo broke out his bottle of whiskey and they sipped it leisurely. A strong buzz made Hilde lean in close to Duo, and kissed him on mouth. Rolling himself on top her, they continued their impromptu make out session until the violet eyed man tried to pull her shorts down.

"Not so fast, cowboy," she chuckled sitting up. Sure, she liked him, but she didn't just give up so easily. She wasn't a hussy. Excusing herself, Hilde left his cabin to get some sleep for the next day.

Duo didn't mind not getting any further with her. Someone else plagued his mind, yearned for the lips of another, someone who he shouldn't want. Can't have. Plus, he doubt she'd let him do what he really want to do anyways.

The next morning, Hilde showered in her private restroom, wrapped herself in a plush lavender towel, and continued her morning ritual of applying simple make up to her face. Giddiness had her bouncing lightly on the balls of her feet, humming a little tune of one of the songs she heard last night in Duo's cabin. Hearing a creak of the wood floors, she turned to see what made the noise, but something hard hit the back of her skull and she fell limp, unconscious to the tiled floor.

Heero stood over the immobile woman, fingers gripped around a tire iron that he stole from a beat up truck from behind Duo's cabin, presumably the counselors vehicle. The boy found hitting the woman with something that belonged to Duo was some sort of twist poetic justice. He watched her chest heave with even breaths. Though he wanted to kill her, he had never murdered another person and knew if he did so now, the whole camp would shut down and he and everyone else would be sent home. Besides he had already gone through the trouble of making sure not to hit her with all his strength. Sneaking out the cabin door, Heero hid the tire iron under her porch and sauntered back to his own cabin. He wasn't worried, there was still a good half hour before the morning bell would ring, awakening everyone but her.

* * *

**TBC...**


	4. Chapter 4

Camp Bleska

Chapter 4

Standing outside the Nurses station, Duo waited impatiently to find out if Hilde was okay. When she didn't come out in the morning her campers became concerned, and they sent one girl in to check on her. Upon walking into the bathroom, the girl found her camp counselor on the floor of the bathroom encased in a purple towel. The girl leaned over her counselor and shook her shoulder, she seemed to be asleep, but she didn't wake up. Hilde groaned softly and turned her head, and that's when the girl saw a small amount of blood on the tile floor.

By the time Sally got to her, she was waking up. The nurse helped her dress and escorted the counselor to her office. Checking her skull, Sally found an abrasion hiding beneath Hilde's short dark hair. She couldn't remember anything after getting out of the shower stall, so she assumed she slipped and fell, cracking her head in the process and giving herself a slight concussion. Walking slowly out of the Nurses station, Hilde soothed Duo's nerves, claiming she was alright, and went to rest in her cabin.

Not feeling much like eating, Duo entered the mess hall and sat at his table, chatted with Wufei, Milliardo, and the other camp counselors. Through the mild conversation, apprehension chewed at the violet eyed mans nerves causing him to bounce his left knee, and bite his fingernails. Glancing about the hall, his eyes landed on Heero who sat beside Relena and ate his meal nonchalantly. The boy looked him dead in the eye for the briefest of moments before gazing back at his own food. In those split seconds, Duo saw something akin to acknowledgement, and admission to something. Somehow he was involved with Hilde's "accident", and he was going to find out just what the little callous monster did.

After breakfast it was announced that the kids were being given a "free day" to which they could either swim in the lake, hang around the campsite, or make art's and crafts at an outdoor table. Duo was more than glad to play lifeguard with Milliardo and Wufei than having to actually  _do_  something with the kids. He went back to his cabin to change into swim trunks and leave his gold cross necklace - the one he wore all the time which had been gifted to him by his mother as a birthday present a few months before her death - on the dresser to the right of his record player. Flipping the cross over, his fingers trailed over the engraving on the back of the cross. It was a cursive inscription of his name, just  _Duo_ , in elegant flowing letters. It was his most prized possession, he'd rather chop off his braid before loosing or giving it away.

Out at the shoreline, Heero sat on a green towel placed next to Relena's. She and her two blond friends and the brunette girl, Anne, wanted to sunbathe and get a tan. Scoffing at the idea, Heero walked into the cool water. Wading at chest level, Heero looked around to the other kids splashing and playing in the water. A sense of forlorn made him duck his head under the water. Why couldn't he be like them? Despite all that had happened to him, why couldn't he be carelessly happy for one day, one hour, one goddamn minute? Why did he have to be so angry, so wrong? That's all he ever felt, wrong, bad. Hatred boiled his blood as he kept himself sitting under the water's surface. Hostility for the kids he couldn't be like, abhorrence of their lack of knowledge of what pain is, and how dark and hurtful life can really be kept him seething under the water.

Kicking against the sandy bottom, Heero jutted up out of the water and inhaled a deep breath of air. Swimming around the dock, Heero segregated himself from the others by hiding on the side no one was playing on. He had to get rid of his frustrations, and the best way he knew to do that was to fondle himself. In his studies, he had learned that children of abuse often took part in excessive masturbation, occasionally at inappropriate times, which only made him feel justified in doing so whenever, wherever he pleased. Plus, it was a good way to release his discontentment.

Duo spied Heero's dark moppy head as he swam to the end of the dock and disappeared around the edge. Taking in his surroundings, Duo asked Wufei to cover his post and left the beach to walk along the dock. Treading lightly, he made sure his steps made no sound as he made his way to the end of the wooden dock. As he approached the submerged boy, the braided man noticed the teen was holding onto the dock with one hand, and the other was under the water, his shoulder twitching back and forth indicating to Duo just what the boy was doing. He almost wanted to laugh, thinking back to when he had been in grade school. Most times he asked to use the restroom was so he could jerk off. He understood the compulsion.

Quietly kneeling by the immersed teen, Duo glanced back at the shore and the kids in the water. Wufei and Milliardo were engaged in some kind of debate, and all the splashing kids paid him no attention. Reaching his hand out, he sunk his fingers into dark brown hair, and shoved the boy's head underwater. Stunned, Heero flung both hands up to grasp around the wrist that held him down, kicking furiously under the water. The hand tugged on his hair, bringing him up painfully to the surface.

Tilting his head up, Heero fully expected to see Muller as his attacker, but his eyes widened seeing violet eyes glare down at him.

"What did you do to her?" Duo asked the boy coldly.

Smirking smugly, Heero denied, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Snarling, Duo shoved the blue-eyed devil's head back under water. This time, Heero didn't struggle, just waited Duo out, opting that he would do no real harm. The braided man held the kids head down for almost a full minute before lugging him back up.

"Tell me what you did," he demanded.

"Nothing," Heero coughed.

Growling, Duo untangled his fingers from the boys wet hair, and marched back across the deck. Obviously threatening Heero out in the open didn't scare him, the kid knew he couldn't hurt him, not like this. Maybe he should inflict is own special brand of punishment. Lure the boy into the forest at night under the guise of giving him what he wants. Tie him with torn bed sheets by the wrist to a branch that could hold his weight. Whip him with a twig or his black leather belt until he confessed what he had done.  _/No.../_  Duo fought himself. Just thinking about that scenario was making him aroused. If he strung the boy up, made him whimper and cry in pain, then he'd surely  _take_  him and have his wicked way with the supple teen. Hell, he'd been fighting with himself not to get hard just drowning the fucker.

Resting his arms on the dock, chin positioned on his folded limbs, Heero watched Duo's back as he walked away. Slightly miffed that he had been interrupted, but he was more antagonized by the way Duo seemed so concerned for Hilde. What was so special about her? She was fine now anyways, watching over the kids at the arts and crafts table with another female counselor. Swimming back around, Heero exited the water and wrapped himself in his green towel by Relena.

Bored with laying in the sun, the young blond turned to her newest friend and asked, "You wanna go walk around?"

Blinking his blue eyes rapidly, Heero nodded, pleased to get away from her friends. He liked Sylvia just fine, she was a nice quiet girl, but Dorothy was a loud mouth bitch who liked to push his buttons. So he followed Relena's lead to the forests edge, green towel drapped around his shoulders. He watched the sway of her feminine hips, buttocks covered by a red bathing suit with yellow polka dots. She turned to smile at him, twisting her upper body to see him, golden hair swinging through the breeze, the sunlight haloed around her form. Heero caught a glimpse of her chest, covered in the same design as her bottoms, and he wondered. What was it like to touch a girl? Did he want to? Their bodies were so different, he had seen text-book illustrations of the vagina, but never in person. Would she show him if he asked nicely? Did he want to see  _hers_? She looked so much like Marino, it would be too incestuous. But wasn't sex with his father the same thing?  _  
_

Shaking the confusing feelings from his mind with violent swings of his head, Heero placed all those kinds of thoughts as far away as he could. He couldn't, wouldn't ask her to expose herself like, she was too kind, too innocent to understand his curiosity.

Plopping to the ground, Relena pulled softly on Heero's wrist to sit beside her. She liked that he was quiet, she didn't need to talk to make their friendship grow, it was just  _there_. Small white flowers littered the ground they sat upon. Plucking them, Relena showed Heero how to twine their stems together and make a ring of flowers. Finishing her ring, she placed the halo of flowers on Heero's head, where it sat atop his messy dark brown hair. Finishing his own flower ringlet, Heero tied it around her pale neck.

After that, Relena began to tell him about her parents, friends, and school. She asked about his life, and what he liked to do, and who was his best friend.

"I don't have one," he admitted, eyes cast to the ground.

Running her hand through his hair, adjusting his flowerband, she proclaimed, "I'll be your best friend."

Giving her a sad smile, Relena felt the despondency waft off him in tangible waves. What made him such a sad boy? Changing the subject, Relena continued, "Did you know my brother is one of the counselors here?" His breath caught in his throat, and his blue eyes widened. It couldn't be - "My brother Milliardo, the guy with the long blond hair," she pointed out, and Heero's tension relaxed. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"

Shrugging, Heero disclosed, "I had a sister."

"Had?" The young girl questioned. "What happened to her?"

"She died."

"Oh," she droned, disposition fading from her usual cheeriness. "How'd she die?" she asked out of ignorance, not realizing that the subject might be too sensitive to speak about.

"Drowned," was all Heero said as he stood up, and walked away.

Relena's light blue eyes followed the mystifying boy as he briskly walked to Cabin Weayaya and vanish inside. Looking down at her hands, which were lugged into the dirt by the nails, she tried not to cry for her friend. Jumping up, she ran after him, to apologize at least.

Duo, whom had hid among the trees when he saw Milliardo's sister meander off with demonic boy, heard their who conversation. Remorse tormented his senses. Fuck, he had falsely tried to drown the kid when his own sister had drowned.  _/He may have done it.../_  A voice murmured in the back of his mind, but he kicked that thought to the curb when recalling the sadden tone Heero used when he spoke of his sibling. Sure, he could have faked the grief, but something told him otherwise.

Sitting on splintered old wood floors, Heero leaned against his bed and pulled out the battered teddy bear. Clutching the fuzzy thing close, Heero drew his knees up to his chest, curling himself to be as physically small as he felt.

Loud footsteps pounded on the stairs and porch of his cabin. The blue-eyed beauty almost hid the bear back under his bed, but decided he didn't care who it was, and pulled himself in more securely.

"Heero..." he heard Relena's voice call out his name, making him relax a little. The door squeaked open, followed by the soft echo of her footfalls. Relena knew she wasn't suppose to go into any of the boys' cabins, but Heero needed her. Finding the somber boy folded up on the floor, she sat beside him. Pulling her own legs up to her humble breasts, Relena asked what he held in his grasp.

Unfurling his appendages, legs falling lax to the floor, Heero exposed the stuffed bear he clung to. "It was my sisters," he conceded in a low voice.

"It's very cute," she replied, running her fingertips over the soft and crusty charred edged circumference of the bears head. They sat quietly for long time, long enough for the lunch bell to ring. They left his cabin together.

Examining from a far, Duo kept his gaze posted on the boy who appeared more withdrawn than normal. As his only friend was consumed by her other companions, Heero pulled away and sat close to the edge of the table, barely touching his food. Duo surveyed the way Heero pushed his meatloaf and green beans about his plate, only nibbling on the green vegetable. Those radiant sapphire blues no longer held an uninhabited gaze, but spoke volumes of sorrow and heartache. Duo could feel his heart slide slowly into his stomach, he wanted to reach out the boy who's kindred soul mirrored his own. But how could he do that when any attention he gave the boy would be misconstrued? Blurred lines would only encourage the boy to seek him out in improper ways.

After the meal, the campers went back to their previous activities. Heero again wandered off by himself. Sneaking back to Hilde's cabin, the teen retrieved the tire iron. As he walked, wielding the metal in his grasp, his blue eyes spotted a small amount of blood at the curve of the long stem. Wiping the blood off on his shorts, Heero gently laid the tire iron back in the bed of the truck he'd plucked it from. Pacing around the vehicle, fingers grazing along the rusted red paint, Heero admired the 1952 Chevrolet. The truck had seen a lot of long hard days, and it showed; chipping paint, rusted side mirrors, missing hinge on the passenger side door.

Peering through the dirty window, Heero spied personal artifacts of the owner. Books, discarded papers thrown about in crunched balls, empty bottles of alcohol left on the floor. Opening the driver's door, Heero jumped in the truck and laughed at Duo for not locking his vehicle. Blue eyes grazed over the glove compartment, and some invisible force drew his hand to it. At first it didn't budge, but Heero jimmied it open. The compartment falling open, a hand full of Polaroids spilled to the floor, falling over the garbage and under the seat. Photographs of men and woman tied up in intolerable positions graced Heero. Some in various states of undress, in other photos no face could be seen, just bodies tied with ropes and other bondage material. A lot of them with red markings that looked to be caused by a whip. In a few photos, cum splattered along many of the people in the photo, and some other liquid Heero assumed was water - though far from water it was. A handful of different bodies and faces stared back at Heero, all of them beautiful in their own way. Though the state of torture sent a fright down the boys spine, his curiosity in the braided man increased ten fold.

Through all the pictures, there was only one of Duo himself. His chestnut hair was unbound, arms extended over his head disappearing out of the image, a black tie tied around his head, sealing his mouth. To Heero's dismay, the photograph ended just above the nipple. The man's violet eyes stared dead into the camera lens, gazing out onto the viewer. Those amethyst orbs twinkled with mischief and a come hither look. Heero wanted to see that leer fixated on him. Stuffing all the photographs back in the glove box, Heero tucked the picture of Duo into the waist band of his shorts.

Jumping out of the truck, a thought raced through Heero's mind.  _/If he likes pictures so much, he must like the one I left him...maybe I should leave another.../_

With the intention of caring out his thought and turning it into action, the dark brown-haired teen scampered to his counselors cabin door. Voices inside made him stop short. He could hear Muller and the other two, Trant and Thaddeus. They were doing something in Duo's cabin, but he left quickly. He'd find out later what those three were up to.

Running to his own cabin, the troublesome boy hid his new treasure in his pillowcase. A second later he took it back out and sought refuge in a shower stall to pleasure himself to the photo. Kneeling on the tile floor, Heero yanked his shorts down and fisted his cock strenuously. Placing the image on the floor between his bent knees, Heero added a saliva slickened finger to his rectum. He had discovered the pleasures of that special gland on his own, not at the hands of his father who never gave him any kind of preparation before penetration. After he aged out of his father's tastes, the boy was given the opportunity to figure out what real sexual pleasure was, though at his own hands.

Messaging his prostate and teasing his dick with a tightened fist, Heero brought himself to climax. Half of his ejaculate rained down on the image of the braided man, covering his photographed face with milky bodily fluids. Trembling - the orgasm had been better than he'd had in a long time - Heero cleaned off the photograph on Muller's red towel. As he placed the picture back in his pillow case, the brown-haired teen wondered what that fuckhead Muller was doing in Duo's cabin.

Outside, Relena was dealing with Dorothy berating her for her innocent crush on the weird boy. Yes, she liked him. Just knowing the boy for five days and she had developed a little crush on him, but she had no idea how to go about telling him, or if she even wanted to. Heero had displayed no interest in her  _like that_ , and she didn't want to ruin their new friendship.

"You should just kiss him and get it over with!" Dorothy teased.

"Leave her alone," Sylvia pleaded. She was getting sick and tired of the teasing. Dorothy could be so mean when she wanted to.

"Well, you wanna kiss 'im, don't cha?" Dorothy continued, ignoring the shy Noventa girl.

Relena blushed in response, and tired to reframe from lashing out at Dorothy. Sometimes she wonder why they were friends at all. The three of them came from wealthy, high standing families that were friends. She was pretty sure that was their only connection for she never really like the Catalonia's anyways.

"Come on! You can tell me. I won't tell anyone," Dorothy promised.

"Yeah! I want to kiss him, but I'm not gonna!" Relena replied angrily. The young Peacecraft girl had never been kissed, and she wasn't about to just walk straight up to Heero and plant one on him.

A few yards away, Duo and Wufei listened to the girls conversation, smirking.

"I remember my first kiss," Wufei told the violet eyed man beside him. "I was so scared I thought I was going to pee my pants."

"Yeah," Duo chuckled. He was sure the Chinese man wanted him to tell his own story, but Duo's first kiss had stolen from him. Taken from him by a "father" who cornered him in a dirty kitchen, and then proceeded to molest him. He'd been maybe nine or ten. The first kiss he gave was in high school to his first girlfriend, but they didn't last long in a relationship.

"You got anybody back home?" Wufei asked.

Duo answered honestly, "Naw, no girl waiting for me there."

"What about..." Wufei tried to approach the taboo topic gently. "What about a guy?" He hoped desperately that he wasn't offending the other man. His unconventional appearance insinuated he may be gay, which was more than frowned upon in 1964.

"Uh..." Duo stammered, "N-no, no guy either." He eyed the Chinese man from the corner of his eye, waiting to see his reaction. Most people didn't react well to a bisexual person. Oh sure, it was hot when two girls hooked up - as long as they weren't real lesbians - but a man enjoying the sexual company of both genders was fairly unheard of.

Looking down at the sand in front of his brown eyes, Wufei questioned, "Are you gay? I mean, if you don't want to tell me I understand, but I also don't care if you are."

"No, I'm not gay," Duo admitted, "I like both girls and guys. I've dated both."

Wufei nodded his head, and let the subject drop since his curiosity had been answered. Besides, the beautiful Nurse, Sally, came out to have fun and swim with the kids. Her ample breast bounced happily, almost defying gravity, as she swayed over to the shoreline, placing Wufei under a trance as she moved.

Neither of them noticed the disappearance of Muller, Trant, and Thaddeus. Though the braided man couldn't find Heero's face anywhere, he assumed the kid was hiding off some place out of trouble, hopefully.

Muller and his two side kicks mucked around in the forest just beyond all the counselors view. They laughed as the rifled through the few stolen goods they had lifted from their counselors cabin. Muller had taken the gold cross by the record player, Trant had stolen some of the weed he found in a baggie - he knew what it was since his older brother had shown him what pot what a few months ago - and Thad took an old Elvis Presley album from the mans record collection. His family was a big Elvis fan and he was excited to have a record of his own, regardless of how he got it, though he did feel a little guilty for he had more of a conscious than the other two.

Heero found his way back to Relena, and persuaded her to go swimming with him so they could be away from the ever aggravating Dorothy. Sylvia joined them, also wanting to get away from their jerk of a friend.

Relena latched her thin pale arms around the boys neck as he swam leisurely through the water. Floating on his back, Relena tested her boundaries with Heero by stroking her index finger along the pulsing vein in his neck. He didn't react. In fact, he had no clue what she was doing, he was simply enjoying being in her company since she made him feel warm. Not the bodily warmth of swimming through chilled water, but she warmed his soul in a way his sister had. Heero had loved his baby sister dearly, wanted to protect her and play big brother to his sibling. But that had been stomped out before she even reached the age of three.

Sylvia swam beside them, watching Relena try vainly to decipher Heero's feelings for her. She didn't think the boy would respond to her friend and wasn't at all surprised when he didn't. There was something strange about this boy, something unnerving but underneath that was something kind. Though she would only experience his evil demeanor.

Heero noticed Sylvia's appraising of him, without knowing what she was wanting to know he presumed the Noventa girl didn't understand him. But that wasn't new, no one understood him.

The three of them swam about, not doing much of anything, and Relena and her friend carried on most of the conversation. Eventually, Relena became discouraged in her attempts to discover if Heero had any feelings for her. Swimming to the shore, she left Sylvia, her friend, in the company of derranged boy whom hardly knew the boundaries of right and wrong.

Coaxing the Noventa girl to swim after him, Heero led the girl to the vacant side of the deck. Once he got her alone and out of sight, Heero snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her in tight. "Don't scream," he ordered her.

Shaking against the strong teen, she whimpered, "What are you doing?"

"I just want to see," he confided as he pulled her bathing suit top up. She froze as the boy yanked the top of her suit up to her neck. Fondling her breast, tweaking her pink nipples, Heero wondered what the other boys found so exciting about boobs. Continuing his unconcented groping, Heero decided he wanted to see or feel more.

Shoving his hand down under the water and into her bottoms, Heero felt the soft folds of her vagina without penetrating her.

"I don't understand," He stated.

By now Sylvia was weeping quietly, afraid of the boy touching her. "What don't you understand?" she sobbed.

"Why boys like this," he answered, trailing two fingers between the folds of her labia.

Shaking, she responded, "I don't either." And she didn't. She had no understanding of sexual desire and she wouldn't for a long, long time after this experience.

Removing his hand, and pulling down her top to cover her modesty, Heero threatened, "If you tell Relena about this, I will, I swear to God I will hurt you," he threatened, shoving his hand back between her legs, "I will hurt you here."

The Noventa girl sobbed pathetically, but Heero was sure she'd keep her mouth shut. His empty eyes portrayed unknown depths of violence to the crying girl. She nodded her head, glad the whole ordeal was over with. It would be years before she told her friend what had happened at Camp Bleska.

Swimming away, Heero felt no sense of guilt for his actions. He had been intrigued by the female body and found his answers through the only way he knew how. By force. Why was it wrong for him to force himself on others when his father, Odin, had forced himself on Heero?

As he sauntered out of the water, the dinner bell rang and all the kids, wet or dry ran for the mess hall. As the kids sprinted by, Heero eyes sought out violet orbs. Those violets had been looking for him, waiting and condemning him. Duo hadn't seen Heero for a few hours and didn't even know the boy was lurking in the water until he reemerged. While passing him by, Duo saw a very upset Sylvia wade out of the water after him. Feeling a cold chill run down his spine, Duo knew the savage boy had done something to her. What, he didn't know.

In the dining room, Duo noticed the sacred Sylvia sat far away from her usual group, opting to sit with girls she didn't know. Relena and Dorothy on the other hand appeared to be emerged in a conversation that excluded the stoic boy.

After the meal, instead of story telling, Howard supplied a sixteen millimeter movie projector and played "High Noon", a PG western flick for all the kids.

Having seen the movie more than once, Duo walked back to his cabin in hopes of smoking a J and getting back before the flick ended. The braided man had just finish licking and rolling the joint shut when a knock echoed through his cabin.  _/Seriously? What the fuck?!/_ He questioned himself and stomped to the door.

Before opening it, he took in the silhouette of a young boy with tousled hair standing outside. Approaching slowly, Duo asked, "What are you doing here?"

"You tried to drown me, I want to know why," Heero stated in an even voice. He knew damn why Duo had attempted to harm him. And he was guilty of that accusation whether the other man knew it or not. The purpose of this visit was to see if the man would allow him inside, and to the braided man's dismay, Duo did.

"I thought you hurt Hilde," Duo answered.

"And if I did..." Heero let the vague statement linger in the tense air as he sat on Duo's bed, one leg crossed over the other, bouncing cumbersomely, relaxed.

Taking a deep breath, Duo responded, "If you did, than you're a monster."

"What happens to monsters?" Heero asked, straying his hand over the comforter, drawing invisible lines over the cotton surface with his right hand, ignoring the underlying threatening tone Duo assured against him.

Feeling too uncomfortable to sit next to the boy, Duo took the chair from the desk and sat himself in it. "If you did... than you need to be punished for it." At that point, he picked up the joint he had rolled from the night stand and lit it, taking a deep inhale from it in the middle of his sentence.

Heero held out two fingers, the index and middle, in expectation of the violet eyed man passing the narcotic cigarette to him, which he did.

Sucking on the boodie, Heero coughed as he expelled the inhaled substance. Duo laughed at him, knowing the teen had never smoked marijuana before. That laugh frustrated Heero, he was not to be made a fool out of, or laughed at by anyone. Passing it back, Heero got up and walked over to Duo. Standing in front of him, Heero leaned down to allow the man to suck a hit without handing it over. The feeling of Duo's lips on his fingers as he inhaled a drag from the joint sent sparks down to Heero's thighs making the muscle taut, his testicles tighten, and his cock twitch in excitement. Duo on the other hand, tried to refrain from any physhical representation of his torment, but the subtle strain and closer of his own knees told Heero all he needed, wanted to know.

Venturing to hide his arousment with the boy leaning over him, Duo's body tensed. The only reason he had allowed the boy into his cabin was to apologize for dunking him under the water, but Duo had forgotten that by now. As the teen leaned against him, one arm strown over the back of his chair, the other dangling the joint in front of his lips, legs spread wide as he stood before him, Duo felt the need - want - to pull the boy close.

Heero finished that last thought of Duo's on his own. Straddling the braided man's lap, Heero made himself comfortable, wiggling his hips until he felt a semi aroused dick poke his backside. Taking another hit, this time without coughing, Heero passed the smoke between his parted lips to Duo's, grazing his mouth over the other in a goading manner in order to taunt.

The violet eyed man inhaled sharply by surprise alone at the boldness of the blue-eyed demon. Said incubus was rotating his waist, circling over the man's groin bringing him to full arousal.

Joint in hand, Duo took another drag and allowed the dark, tousled haired boy to virtually give him a lap dance. Whirling his ass on the mans crotch, Heero celebrated in the feeling of a stiff cock pressed hard against his crack. Jerking his hips back and forth, he felt the head of the mans penis press against his hole and moaned loudly.

Placing his hands on the supple waist of the boy, Duo directed him to ride his clothed cock further, twisting and swaying in an immodest way to gain his own satisfaction. Duo thought the boy a whore, a lascivious being to tempt him through lust to his own ultimate downfall. And he was winning.

The two of them worked in tandem until Duo felt himself close to climax, at which point he shoved the boy back, accusing him of being the malevolent creature that he was. Though Duo knew it wasn't the boys fault. He was made that way at the hand of another, and Duo would be the ultimate monster if he capitulated to Heero's unvoiced demands.

Heero fell to the wood floor when Duo shoved him from his lap. At the vicious outburst Heero ran from the cabin, seeking refuge in his own bed. He wasn't a lustful monster - was he? Yes, he sought out Duo's attention in any way he could, preferably sexual but that didn't make him evil - did it? He just wanted the braided man to notice him, care for him, want him in a way that might be - could possibly be wrong for a man his age. Heero didn't care. Or so he told himself, but he did care. Some invisible force made him seek out Duo, he didn't know it was their allied bond between abuse. All he saw was something in Duo that reflected upon himself and told him the man would understand, possibly want him if he tried hard enough.

In his own cabin, submerged under blankets and sheets, Heero decided he'd make the braided man his no matter what the cost.


	5. Chapter 5

Camp Bleska

Chapter Five

Duo wanted the boy. Wanted and craved him more than food or air. But he refused to acknowledge that need. He tried vehemently to repress that dark urge. Duo didn't want to be a predator preying on young flesh. He attempted to be better than those who had damned him to evil; made him a sadist. Oh, he gained immense pleasure from the pain of others, but that didn't mean he reveled in it all the time. He tried vainly to fight it, but it would always be apart of him. That part of him wanted to strip the young Heero of his clothes, strike his face with a bare hand, make his toes curl in promiscuous torment. The demonic boy wasn't the only one who was depraved of human needs. Duo, by fault, was more sadistic than any other person the boy had ever been exposed to.

Last night, after Heero had grinded himself against the braided man's lap, Duo dreamed of claiming him. Taming him. Bending the evil boy to his own vicious wants and needs. In his dream, he tied the boy to his bed and sodomized him with foreign objects; candle sticks, travel size shampoo bottles, and any other cylindrical object he could think of. In his reverie, the braided man hog tied the blue-eyed angel and forced him to beg for sexual release by teasing his genitals incessantly. In his dream, Duo could make the boy cry, whimper, purr in longing; make the teen complacent with whatever he desired.

In reality, Duo knew he could do all those things by demonstrating one ounce of his force. Oh, he could have the boy quivering under his booted foot if he wanted. Heero thought himself the aggressor in this little dance, but in actuality Duo was only extinguishing - or trying to - his lust for the boy. When he caved - if he caved - Duo would assert complete authority over the blue-eyed darling. Above all else, there was one sure-fire way to make the divine creature fold to his will. Marking him like he was territorial property would make him - or any weak, abused person - docile and accommodating to any of his needs. He fantasized how the boy would react to such treatment, if he would scare away from it, tremble in fright, or allow the treatment to happen. For all Duo knew, the boy had experienced it all before.

Waking up in a hot sweat, Duo gasped for breath. He tried desperately to push his dreams away, they were wrong and immoral on so many different levels. His cock literally pitched a tent under the sheets and he damned himself as he grasped his dick around the base, lifted himself to grab the book off his nightstand, and retrieve his "bookmark" for viewing. He brought himself to completion as quickly as possible, which wasn't as pleasurable in the long run, but that wasn't the point. His violet eyes stared into luscious blue as he came.

Berating himself, the violet eyed man felt an immense sense of guilt at remembering how he'd let the teen ride his lap like a stripper working for money. Fuck, fuck, fuck. It was day six. DAY SIX! Not even a full week and he was crumbling. Swaying under the his own illegal wants, under the heavy current named Heero. What would happen if he acted his fantasy out? Would Heero tell? Would the sex be worth it? Would the boy let him tie him to a tree and whip him? Why did that fantasy keep coming back to his mind's eye?

"Fuck, I'm righteously screwed," Duo murmured to himself, burying his face in his hands.

-Present Day: Day Twenty One-

_The boys' moans augmented as his hot semen flowed over Duo's stomach. The sensation of that warm bodily fluid on him and the sheath of the boys' body tightening around his cock pulled him over the edge as well, cumming in his ass._

_/Definitely going to hell./ He thought as the boy collapsed on his chest, head buried in the crock of his neck, hot breath panting against his sweat dampened skin._

_He had won. The malign boy had pulled him down the path he never wanted to venture upon. But a sense of fulfilment and possessive obsession fluttered through Duo's chest as he stroked the damp dark hair by his neck. Though the boy had started it all, put the actions into motion, Duo would be the one to resolve the end when he felt it necessary_.

\- Day Six-

Stalking to the bathroom, Duo showered and dressed, praying for a day of relief from the recondite boy. Those sapphire depths plagued his mind, all this back thoughts turning to those eyes, those strange alluring orbs that would eventually condemn him. Pulling on his work shirt, he tried to push those eyes from his thoughts but a flicker of them from the night before, inches from his face, intense steely blue twinkling with neediness, fluttering with yearning under those heavy lashes. The memory fuzzed along the edges before it disappeared, shoved away by the determination of the violet eyed man.

His eyes fell to his record player, to the spot he'd placed his cross...and it wasn't there...gone.

Bottom lip trembling, shoulders shaking, fingers flexing into tight fists, Duo felt nauseous. His most valued belonging was gone. Vanished. Gritting his teeth together, the bottom jaw grinding up against the top, the violet eyed man glared out his screen door. That freak, that motherfucking seducing succubus had taken it! There was no one else in his room besides Heero. Oh, he'd wring that kids neck to get it back and flee the tri-state area if he had to. Duo would find his crucfix and take it back, fuck the cost and screw the consequences of whatever actions he needed to take, he'd get it back!

The morning breakfast bell rang, and Duo led his twelve campers to the mess hall, all the while looking back at the blue-eyed, dark messy haired, luscious soft tan skinned sociopath. There was no recognition in those eyes, which made Duo wonder, did he offend the boy the previous night? Yes, Heero had been humiliated when the braided man shoved him from his lap onto the ground. He had been so close to getting what he wanted; the man's attention, affection, sexual desire. At the last possible moment, just when he was about to lean in and latch his mouth onto the mans full pink lips, he was pushed away. Heero was angry, livid, at being denied this way. No one contested his approaches, and it infuriated him that Duo had. He wasn't about give up, but he wouldn't give the man any attention in return until he wanted to, deemed the time ready for it.

Once the kids retrieved their food and sat at their tables, Duo vacated the mess hall. Jogging briskly to Cabin Weayaya, he pushed through the screen door and located Heero's bunk on the right side of the room. Stripping it down, and tossing the pillow aside, he didn't find anything except for a soiled pair of underwear. On the black fabric were white stains dried and crusted over, flaking off the woven material. Sadistic compulsion brought the worn under garments to his face. Inhaling the heady scent of the boys crotch and pheromones brought on a strong feeling of want, sensuality, all of which added to his growing obsession with the boy.

He kept the underpants with him as he searched Heero's belongings. All he found was a single duffel bag and a charred teddy bear under the kids bed. Turning the bear in his grasp, Duo almost decided to take the stuffed animal in an act of revenge, but his mind told him if he retaliated this way he'd only have to deal with the full wrath the blue-eyed creature could unleash.

Stalking back to his cabin, Duo hid Heero's underpants in his chest at the end of his bed. Part of him thought he should go back to the mess hall, but he was too upset. Laying on his bed, submerging his heart-shaped face into his pillow, Duo allowed himself to cry briefly. Only permitting just a few tears to fall. How could he have lost the one thing, the  _one goddamn thing_  that meant so much to him?!  _/I'll give him whatever he wants./_  Duo thought to himself. He'd do anything to get that gifted necklace back.

He made it back to the mess hall as the campers began to pile outside. Appraising his target, Heero took in the distraught form of his counselor. The man hid it so well, but Heero knew. The boy assumed it was his fault and a slight pang of guilt followed his assessment, but not enough to dissuade him from proceeding to attain the braided man as his own.

Arts and crafts followed. Fucking more arts and goddamn crafts. Neither Heero, Duo, or the other boys were excited about this constant activity.

The supple blue-eyed teen walked away from the table after Duo demonstrated their new activity. Catching violet eyes, Heero nodded his head in the direction he was going; a signal for Duo to follow. Which he did.

Hidden amongst the shelter of trees, Duo clutched the boy by the shoulders, shook him and seethed, "Give it back!"

"Give what back?" Heero asked, completely unaware of what the violet eyed man wanted.

Jostling the boy more violently, Duo yelled, "GIVE IT BACK!"

Heero, for the first time in a long while, became fearful. "I didn't take it!" he cried, not sure of what Duo was screaming about.

Latching his fingers around the teens soft neck, cutting off his air way purposefully, Duo bent down to be eye level with the suffocating boy. "You give it back or I choke the fucking life out of you," he simmered in a low tone.

"I - I don- don't have i-i-i-it," Heero gasped out with his last breathes, slender fingers seized around the wrists choking him.

Releasing his choke hold on the supple demon who fell to the ground, Duo gave the boy the gift of air as he waited for a truthful answer. Clutching each shoulder in his hands, he rocked the teens frame against the dirt ground. "Give it  **back**!" he fumed again. Pulling and pushing violently on the feeble shoulders as he raised and drove the teens upper body repeatedly into the ground.

Heero wrapped his thin legs under Duo's armpits, and threw him to the side with the mighty force of his strong thighs, releasing himself of his captures grasp.

"I didn't take anything!" He screamed as he scrambled away. Low and behold, he didn't know that Duo had willingly set him free.

The braided man could have easily held on, kept the tortured teen in his grasp. A sniveling voice had told him to let go. Only the righteous part of his mind told him to release his grasp on the boy he wanted to shake, punch, and kick until he confessed to stealing his cross.

"Give it back," Duo whimpered pathetically. His shoulders trembled, lips quivered, sweat breaking out on his brow. Heero could see the physical torment the man was going through over this "lost" item that he'd "stolen". But Heero didn't take anything except for the photograph, to which he wasn't going to admit to unless confronted specifically about, and he was fairly sure Duo was upset about something more important than a picture.

Clambering to his feet, Heero took off in a fast sprint to get away from the braided man. He didn't understand what the outburst of anger was about, and knew he had to get away fast before Duo's own malicious side made its dramatic reappearance again. Yes, the dark, tousled haired teen was beginning to see the kinship between their dark souls. The blue-eyed whore had seen the vicious, malignant desire that blazed in those violet eyes. But Duo, he had grown out of it, maybe. He had found a way to reconcile with it and take back the hold it had over him, retrieve the control, find a medium to balance the good and the bad. Heero, on the other hand, was a loose cannon, and he knew it.

Running back to the arts and crafts table, Heero slowed down, not wanting to direct any attention to himself. He massaged his neck softly, pretending it did not hurt as much as it did. Gasping reluctantly, Heero sat himself beside his blond female friend.

"Where'd you go?" Relena asked.

Shaking his head, Heero answered, "No where. Just the bathroom."

The Peacecraft girl took in the sight of the red markings on her friends tan neck, baffled by how those wounds appeared on his soft skin, she didn't ask. She didn't know how to ask such a question.

Heero gathered his breath and his troubled nerves as he sat, inhaling deep needed lung full of needed oxygen. Shaken, the teen tried to make sense of the braided man's outburst and display of anger. Surely it couldn't have been due to the gyrations he'd maneuvered on the man's lap. Duo had fully enjoyed himself until the moment he pushed Heero off his lap.

The blue-eyed boy played the charade of enjoying the craft making until the lunch bell rang. All the kids, mainly the boys, ran for lunch, hopelessly wanting another task to focus on that wasn't so "girly". Eating wasn't feminine in their minds.

Duo kept himself outside the mess hall, too angry to eat or chat composedly with the other counselors. His inner rage was slowly winning, eating at his edges, making him more unnerved and uncontrollable than ever before. Violet eyes filled with turmoil, anger, distress. His shoulders trembled with wrath as he devised any and all half-baked ideas to get his cross necklace back. Through his blinding red rage, Duo couldn't decipher if Heero had in fact been the one who'd stolen his gifted necklace. But who else would take it? He sure as hell didn't find it among Heero's belongings.

In the mess hall, all was as ordinary until part way through the feeding hour. Heero had been trying to ignore any and all things around him, including Relena and her friends. He couldn't fake his participation in the jovial laughter and their giddy happiness anymore than usual. Normally, he could falsify an outward appearance of indifferent façade, but today, after the attack by Duo, the messy brown-haired teen couldn't counterfeit  _any_  outward emotion. His stance was rigid, expecting an attack, eyes expressionless, dead to all those around him, including Relena. She didn't have much attention to give him today but when she did, she saw those lovely blue depths wide and slightly unblinking as they stared off into nothing, departed of any sentiment giving the teen an aura of darkness; something not to be reckoned with.

A racket echoed through the hall from a table near by. The boisterous noise made Heero turn his head sharply. As kids stood, waving their arms, yelling and screaming, the blue-eyed teen felt perturbation skim across his spine.

The noise grew, teenagers began to scream more loudly, and Heero clasped his hands over his ears to muffle the petrifying noise. Everyone started to run about, like an explosion had rocked the foundation of the campsite. Ducking under the his lunch table, Heero hid with his hands covering his ears tightly.  _/What's going on?!/_  He screamed to himself, mentally. He recognized Relena's frantic steps by her ankles alone. Grabbing the blond girl by the joints, Heero yanked her down to the ground, she fell on splattered food strewn across the floor, and he pulled her underneath the table. She laughed.

Confused by her reaction, he asked, "What's happening?"

"It's a food fight!" She screamed in a hysterical laughing manner.

Relieved and shocked, Heero let Relena crawl back out from underneath the table and run about the food splattered floor. She slipped lightly on crushed bread but didn't fall completely. Her cheerful laughter rang in his eardrums.

Heero may have joined in, but the noise. THE NOISE! All the yelling and screaming and laughter, made him hide out under the table, fingernails digging behind shelled ears, anguishly attempting to shield himself from the hubbub that continued to grow around him.

Finding no reprieve, Heero jumped out from under the table and a sloppy joe hit the side of his face. Spinning on his heel, he witnessed the devious smirk on Muller's face as the kid turned to launch more food at an unsuspecting victim. As he swiveled, Heero saw the glimmer of gold flash about the boys neck. A cross sparkled radiantly around the boys nape, dangling lightly in the chaos. That was the cross! The item Duo freaked out on him about!

He'd get it back for the violet eyed man.

A halved lime slapped against his brow, sending the acidic stinging juices into his eye. Loosing sight of Muller, Heero made a break for the front doors and burst through them, hauling ass to get away from the noise.

Strong arms wrapped around his waist, hefted him off the ground as he kicked and squealed for release. He couldn't see, but he could feel himself being lugged away from the building.

A hand smacked across his face, striking him along the cheek and adding more pressure to his burning eyes.

Snapping his smoldering eyes open, just for a moment, Heero could see nothing but sunlight falling through open spaces of tree branches. In attempt to break free from the unknown force, Heero dug his heels into the ground, trying to gain friction that would slow his attacker down and free him. But his assailant was much too powerful. That unknown force lifted him completely off the ground and pulled him further into unknown territory.

"Let me go!" He squealed agitatedly, flailing his limbs in every direction in hopes of finding liberty, attempting to strike whomever held him.

Tossed to the ground like a heap of trash, the teen continued to blindly thrash about, but a great weight fell on top of him. The weight of a body.

Duo twisted the boy to lay on his stomach, an arm pinned behind the boys back, his own knees placed inside flapping legs to deter their rapid movement. As their appendages dug into the earth's dirt surface, Duo growled, "Is this what you want?" and drove his groin to pound the boys buttocks beneath him.

Feeling that hard, rigid cock prod between his cheeks, Heero whimpered. This was what he wanted essentially; to break the man down and give into him, but not like this. Not out of anger and revenge, but out of lust, need, and possession. Duo hadn't planned on being aroused, but lifting the boy up and essentially kidnapping and dragging him into the forest made him slightly horny. And when flung the boy to the ground and sprawled out over him, the sensation intensified.

"I don't have it!" he yelled loudly, wishing and hoping, but knowing no one would hear him. Not with the commotion going on in the mess hall.

A stong hand fisted itself in his dark hair, shoved his face in the dirt before lifting it back up and shaking it roughly enough to crack the bones within his neck. "I don't believe you," Duo's dark sinister voice whispered in his ear.

Placating, Heero answered, "I know who has it."

Breathing heavily on the boys back, the braided man asked upon a cruel whisper, "Who?"

"Let me go," Heero growled, "and I'll retrieve it for you."

Rolling the both of them over, Duo twisted the dark-haired demon to face him, his agile frame rest against his heaving chest. "Get it back for me. And I'll give you anything you want," he promised.

Interest heightened, Heero's blue eyes lit with a blaze of greed and dominion, sparkling with the heady delight of having won - or so he thought. Leaning down, his lush lips hovering an inch above the violet eyed man's mouth, Heero susurrated, "Maybe I need some insurance."

Growling, Duo couldn't be sure that they psychopath on top of him was speaking truthfully. Every word could easily be a well thought out lie. But he had searched the boy's bed and his duffel bag and found nothing. A fruitless hunt yielded nothing of value except the dirty underwear of an erotic creature.

His snarl dying in the back of his throat, Duo lied with his expression. Allowing the muscles in his face to lax, eyes assuaging around the edges, mouth puckering lightly, Duo raised his head from the ground. Heero's sapphire eyes soften in response, lids falling leadenly as he lowered his head down. Their lips made intimate contact, pushing gently against one another in a closed mouthed, caste kiss.

Unwillingly, the violet eyed man felt something, a unfamaliar emotion, prickled at his edges, spreading warmth from the bottom of his belly up to his chest, making him feel light-headed. A similar effect wafted through Heero. A sense of safety, of something deeply affectionate - love? - heated his cold core.

Yanking his head away, not wanting to be consumed by the overwhelming feeling, Duo rested his head back on the dirt. "You have your  _insurance_  now," Duo murmured, "Now, get me my cross  **back**."

"As you wish," the blue-eyed teen muttered in reply, unhappy with the swift end to their embrace, but he rolled off his counselor quickly and made his way back to the mess hall.

Standing outside, Heero could hear the loud noise emanating from the dining hall. Deciding to wait the whole ordeal out, the boy planted his butt on a nearby stump. Surely he may be able to hurt Muller through the chaos going on inside, but the ruckus! All that goddamn clamor grated on his ears like nails on a chalkboard. One of the few things that could make him buckle like a new-born lamb was loud, unceasing noise. Such things sent the blue-eyed, dark-haired boy into a panic.

All the counselors inside were trying desperately to stop the food fight, but seventy-two - seventy-one - kids was a hard corral to wrangle. Fed up with getting no where, Milliardo flung himself out the front doors, wiping a plethora of food from his chest and legs. He stumbled about irritably until his blue gaze fell on the lone boy sitting on a tree stump.

"What are you doing out here?" Peacecraft asked.

Twiddling his thumbs, Heero replied honestly, "I don't like the noise."

"Me neither," Milliardo huffed.

Gauging the boy, the long blond-haired counselor found the teen rather appealing. His fair, tawny skin was welcoming, whether the boy knew it or not. His blue eyes captivating. His dark brown hair a lovely contrast to his other features. Milliardo fancied  _young_  boys, and this teen - his sisters friend - was a diamond in the rough.

As he walked close, Heero could feel the air around him shift. Invisible negative energy making him aware of some kind of danger. Flicking his eyes up to the approaching adult, his blue eyes took in the sight of hunger from the man. Not the kind of hunger he wanted to see in Duo, but the kind of lust he'd seen in Odin's eyes. An appetite, a longing that would only bring torment, unfulfilled promises.

"I...I should go inside," Heero murmured, his heart beating quickly with fear. Jumping to his feet, and making a break for the mess hall doors, the boy was once again grabbed by strong arms.

"Relax," Milliardo soothed, one arm wrapped around the narrow waist, his other pressed against his chest. Maliciously smirking at the thundering heart beat under his palm, Milliardo stated, "It's good that you're not involved with the disturbance inside," and clutched the boys soft groin, "You're such a good boy."

Flustered, the boy squabbled to free himself, throwing his arms and legs in each direction, kicking the man in the shin. Milliardo released his grasp and allowed the boy to run, bolt through the mess hall doors to freedom. His vindictive smirk spread into a grin as he rubbed his leg. He'd finally found someone weak enough, abused enough to be his own victim.

Duo watched the whole encounter from behind a tree, his fingers digging angrily into bark as he watched his - no, not his. Never his. - teen molested and frightened by another man. He'd never witnessed someone else being unwillingly touched and it made him want to defend and protect the supple boy. Violet eyes blazed with a fury akin to the angry fires of hell; he would not let Milliardo touch Heero again.

Inside, the blue-eyed boy rested his back against the closed doors, panting heavily as he tried to calm his nerves. That experience had been worse than being attacked by Duo, twice. But being inside the chaos did him no good. The noise was still over powering and he sank to the floor, clutching his ears. He had no escape. All he could do was wait.

Covered in food, and a hand full of sloppy joe in her hand, Relena saw her tortured friend crumbled over by the doors. The food fell from her grasp as she ran over to the obviously distraught teen. She didn't understand his anguish.

Sprinting up to him, she reached out to grasp him by the elbows and yelled above the noise, "Come on!"

Heero kept his hands firmly placed over his ears and shook his tousled head in the negative.

"Why not?" She asked, kneeling down to be eye level with the boy.

He only continued to shake his head vehemently, eyes clamped shut. Though his expressionist eyes were shut, Relena could feel the boys torment. Placing her hands over his, she helped block out more of the noise and folded her legs to sit in front of him. Unconsciously, she decided to stay with her friend slash crush until he'd calm himself, or until the food fight was over, which ever came first.

Eventually, all the hullabaloo simmered down, coming to a halt. Howard finally achieved what the counselor couldn't do; he ended the food fight with his voice dispersed over a megaphone. Everyone was ordered to clean up the mess hall, all afternoon activities were cancelled until the Mess Hall was cleaned.

Heero wasn't happy to be involved with the clean up process, but he bit his tongue to keep silent. Playing along was better than being outside alone with that bastard blond. So scrub the floors he did.

Duo entered the dining hall to assist in the clean up, and found the whole situation rather hilarious. Part of him wished he'd been there to see it. He chatted idly with Hilde, keeping an eye on the tall blond man through their conversation. Milliardo kept looking back at the lean teenager who worked alongside his sister. Duo didn't like the attention Peacecraft gave Heero, and though he wanted to be as far away from blue-eyed devil, Duo knew he wasn't about to let Milliardo have his way with him. He'd do his best to protect the blue eyed angel without his knowing.  _/He could be an angel...if he tried./_

After a good two hours, and buckets on top of buckets of soppy water and sponges, the mess hall was finally cleaned and the kids were punished with having to spend the rest of the afternoon in their cabins. A sort of "grounding", administered by Howard. It was the only punishment he could think of, deprive the teens of the days activities and have them remain - hopefully bored - in their cabins. This act of discipline gave Heero the chance to be close to Muller and figure out a way to retrieve the stolen item without damaging it.

Muller and Trant pushed their beds together, and pulled out a deck of cards. Muller invited all the boys to their bunks to play a game of poker, all of them except for Heero.

One of their bunk mates didn't know of the Muller's dislike for the dark-haired boy. "Are you going to play with us?" A blond boy named Alex asked Heero.

"That bitch boy isn't allowed over here," Muller sneered. "He can play with his ratty teddy bear."

"He has a teddy bear?" Thad laughed. "Whadda queer."

Alex sat down on the squeaking mattress, feeling uncomfortable at the change of mood in the air. He noticed Heero glaring daggers at Muller who'd started dispersing the cards.

The dark-haired boy sat on his own bed, watching as the other's played their games; laughing, smiling, and talking about girls. They all boasted about how far they'd "gone" with girls from their schools; kissing, boob touching, Trant lying about seeing a vagina in person and not just from one of his dads porno rags. Keeping his pillow pulled to his chest, arms and legs wrapped around it, Heero kept his glare on Muller and the dangling cross around his neck.

Biding his time, the plotting teen disappeared into the bathroom. Twisting the metallic knob, hot liquid rained down from the rusted shower head, splashing against with the tile floor with soft  _pitter patters_. With the way the showers stalls were set up, three-inch tiled walls separated each stall on the sides, a curtain separated the shower itself from a small changing space that was also blocked from view by another curtain.

Sitting in the space between the two drapery, Heero pulled his knees up to his chest and waited.

A few of the boys drifted in and out to use the restroom, none of them suspecting anything of the boy they thought was in the showers. The fourth boy walked in, and dangerous blue eyes peeked from between the curtains. Finally, Muller had isolated himself and the Japanese boys patience paid off. He sat tight until his target finished taking a piss in the only toilet stall.

Walking past the shower's, Muller felt hands grasp around his ankles. His eyes shot downwards and he caught sight of tan slender fingers enveloped around his joints. He only had a moment to feel extreme panic before they pulled tightly, and his world went black.

Heero heard the hollow  _thunk_  of Muller's head connecting with the edge of a porcelain sink followed by the  _smack_ of his body hitting the tiled floor. Luckily the sound of the shower and the laughter from the boys outside kept the attack muted from prying ears.

Throwing the curtain open, Heero lunged himself over the boy, lifted Muller's head by his dark hair and sent his head down violently for good measure. Satisfied with his victims state of unconsciousness, the blue-eyed boy dragged Muller into space he'd been occupying between the curtains, hiding him from view. Heero folded Mulller's body so it would fit in the confined space by bending his legs at the knee and propping the boy's head on the wall.

After nimbly removing the crucifix and placing it around his own neck, the lethal predator was about leave the bathroom when some form of curiosity held him back. Softly pulling down the susceptible boys shorts and underwear to his bent knees, Heero intern pulled down his own red shorts. He compared their flaccid members and smirked smugly noticing he was somewhat larger than other boy. A darker force consumed him, and the tan skinned boy was soon intrigued at having a living person under his command. Yeah, he wanted Duo, but he wasn't stupid. He couldn't completely take over the braided man, he was much stronger, had more muscle. Plus, he'd never been the dominator sexually, only controlling in the way he could get someone else to bend to his will and touch him, never to touch in return. Roaming his left hand between the predisposed boy's buttocks, the dark-haired boy circled Muller's entrance with his middle finger before pushing it drily in to the first knuckle.

Muller groaned and his eyes shifted under closed lids. Fearful, Heero removed his hand, clutched the sides of Muller's head in both hands and shoved his head back into the tile wall to keep him incapacitated. Not wanting to be caught red-handed, though he felt no guilt for his brief molestation - it had been done so many times to him, why shouldn't he do it to someone else? - Heero pulled up his and Muller's shorts and scrambled out of the bathroom before the others noticed something was up.

Outside Duo's cabin door, the blue-eyed boy heard two voices. He instantly recognized Hilde's voice. Rage, boiling red rage made his blood pressure heighten. Clutching the necklace that rested under his shirt, Heero decided he wasn't going to give the item back until he got something in return for it. And if the braided man refused, he'd throw the crucifix in Lake Erie and find something more  _permanent_  for Hilde.

Hilde had come to hang out with Duo after the mess hall incident. The kids were the one's being punished, not the counselors. Listening to music, smoking a joint, talking and laughing easily with Duo, Hilde felt at ease around him. She liked him, fancied him, though she was sure he wasn't fully heterosexual. Being gay was taboo, and part of her felt a little sick at the idea of him being with other men, but his alluring presence helped push that nausea away. Hilde wasn't about to come right out and ask Duo what his sexuality was, if she did she may not want to be around him anymore. She'd had one gay friend in high school, but when she found out about the girl being a lesbian, Hilde cut off all ties with her. Nothing good came of being friends with the school fag or dyke.

Through the afternoon until lunch time, Hilde and Duo relaxed in his cabin. Part of her wanted to kiss him again, but she never got the chance, and he never seemed to want to initiate any kind of intimate contact. The braided man knew she was waiting for him to make a "move", but he didn't feel it safe to be like that with her since he was pretty goddamn sure that Heero had hurt her. A voice kept telling him that he shouldn't even have Hilde in his cabin, but she'd come over on her own. Besides, he was bored and wanted some kind of company, and something to take his mind off his stolen cross.

Momentarily, Duo felt the chill he always sensed whenever the blue-eyed teen was close. Looking about his cabin and gazing out the screen door, his violet eyes found nothing. Regardless, he was certain Heero had been close by.

During lunch, Duo couldn't find Heero anywhere. Or Muller. His table of teens were short two kids, and that made the violet eyed man very, very high-strung. Though he wasn't aware that Muller had been the one who stole his cross, he was sure Heero was behind his disappearance.

Muller awoke to find himself in the cramped space between two curtains in a shower stall. He knew Heero was behind it all, he could remember seeing the boys hands around his ankles, but he didn't know what the blue-eyed boy had done to him until he noticed the necklace gone. Relieved, Muller sighed heavily knowing that was the only thing Heero took from him, but he couldn't shake the unfounded sensation that something else - to what he didn't know - had been done. His head ached painfully as he gathered himself to his feet.

In the woods, Heero found himself a nice secluded spot. He wanted to be alone. After going through the trouble of retrieving the necklace, the brown-haired boy felt betrayed at seeing Hilde in Duo's cabin. He knew, Duo  _knew,_  he'd been the one to attack her the first time, so why was he pushing the boundaries? Pushing his buttons? The braided man was gambling on a dangerous game.

Twisting the cross between his right thumb and index finger, the vexed blue-eyed teen tried to find a way to get the dark-haired counselor away from his ultimate target. He couldn't kill her...unless he hid the body very well...got rid of her car...threw her belongings into the lake...all to make it seem like she'd left in the middle of the night...

Would that push the braided man further away or scare him farther into his web? What would happen with the camp if one of their counselors disappeared? If they dismissed the kids back home, than all of it would be in vain. That wasn't an option...Maybe.

 _/He should know better./_  Heero told himself. That magnetic pull between the both of them was from some kind of kinship that they both shared, whether the braided man realized it or not. Heero hardly perceived the link, but he knew  _something_ was there.

He knew he was missing the lunch hour, but the dangerous teen wasn't hungry at this point. Digging a stick into the dirt, he contemplated - or tried to - Duo's perspective on the whole matter. But no matter how hard he tried, Heero couldn't understand Duo fully without getting closer; under his skin. Knowing the braided man's past would open up so many doors for Heero to exploit.

At the end of lunch, the Muller boy finally entered the mess hall, rubbing his head which had bled a little. Being a teenager allowed him to bounce back from injuries like a rubber band. He'd find a way to get back at the Japanese boy when he had the chance.

Duo was glad to see the boy finally make an appearance, but the lack of Heero still kept him on edge.  _/Where is he?_ / He questioned.

After lunch, the kids were again sent back to their cabins. Howard wasn't about to let them have any fun for the rest of day. Muller and his bunk mates went back to playing card games. Half way through their first game of poker, the dark-haired bully decided to get back at Heero by taking the teddy bear that rested under his bed. Taking the stuffed animal to the bathroom, where he'd been attacked, Muller shoved the bear in the toilet, submerging it in an unclean facility. He instructed the other boys to piss or shit on it without flushing. Trant and Thad didn't care, but Alex and Ahmend had problem with that. They had no problem with Heero, though the kid was weird and uncomfortable to be around they saw no reason to mess with his stuff in such a disgusting way, but Muller pressured them into complying. Made it clear to them that if they didn't they too would be victims of his harassment. Though to Muller's dismay - which he wouldn't ever know about - Alex and Ahmend urinated in the last shower stall over the drain, rather than piss on their bunk mates possession.

After lunch, Hilde wanted to go back to Duo's cabin to smoke more weed, but he declined, claiming to need rest and solitude. Yeah, he needed the seclusion in case Heero came to him with his cross, but he couldn't tell Hilde that. Rest, he didn't need. She was disappointed, but decided to hang out with the other female camp counselor and Nurse Po. Wufei would join in later who was obviously infatuated with the busty Nurse greatly.

Duo sat on his porch, twiddling his thumbs, waiting, waiting, waiting for the boy who never came. He was beginning to worry, and even asked the other teens in Cabin Weayaya if they'd seen him. They hadn't, and from the look of pique from Muller, Duo thought he may have done something to the beautiful blue-eyed boy. But Heero's a strong boy, Duo knew that. He must be hiding...but where?

Dinner came and went, and the dark-haired creature never made his appearance. If he was still missing by morning, the braided man would have to report his absence, send a team of people into the forest to find him.

Feeling despondent and helpless, the violet eyed man played a somber record to reflect his mood. He wasn't a huge fan of classical music, but Mahler had a way of expressing grief like no other. Duo sat on his bed listening to the sad music, cross-legged hunched over himself, right index finger playing on the photograph of Heero. His finger circled the boys nave, wistfully tickling the belly button and daydream about what the boy looked like below the V curve of his hips.

At dusk, Heero gave up his pondering. It was getting him no where. Killing Hilde would do no good, and he was having trouble thinking of a way to get her out of the way without poisoning her with something...something he didn't have...but that the nurse may have...he might have to break it...it was his only clear, premeditated option so far. Heero didn't like that, yes he was calculated attacker, but he also like to live in the moment. His first attack on Hilde had been of opportunity, finding the tire iron, seeking her out to find her already isolated in her bathroom. Muller had been a risk, an exhilarating risk, but a precarious endeavor all the same. He was just good enough and quick enough to not get caught...so far.

Walking back into the campsite, night had fallen some time ago, Heero didn't notice the braided man sitting on his porch waiting for him.

"Hey!" Duo called out.

Heero snapped his head up to see violet eyes worried and relieved. He didn't respond. Just stood in place.

Duo was thrown by the lack of answer, the boy always responded in some way shape or form. Standing from his porch, Duo motioned with his hand for Heero to come close.

Though he didn't want to, the blue-eyed teen felt his feet move, approaching the braided man slowly.

"Did you get it back?" Duo asked, hopeful.

The teen answered by pulling the necklace out from under his shirt, jingling the cross that dangled on the chain.

Stepping forward eagerly, Duo reached out to touch it but Heero walked back a few steps. Brows pinching in confusion, mouth screwing in a frown, Duo asked, "What are you doing? Give it to me."

Shaking his tousled head in the negative, Heero took two more steps backwards, adding more distance between himself and the violet eyed demon he lusted after. The teen was too angry to just hand over the one item he could hold over his prey's head. He shouldn't have let that woman into his cabin, then he could have had it right away.

Eyes darkening, muscles tensing, fingers clenching, Duo seethed quietly, "Give it back, or else."

Cockily, Heero replied, "Or else...what?"

Lunging at the boy - Heero turned on his heel and got one foot on back on the ground before he was tackled. Today was one motherfucking attack after the next for the abused teen. Once he felt himself failing to dirt, Heero let himself go lax, collapsing lamely to the ground. Not finding the will to fight or ward off the attack, too tired to even try, Heero let the braided man flip him on his back. Duo sat on the boy's chest, pressing the weight of his full-sized, twenty year old body crush the frame beneath him. With Heero beneath him, the braided man grabbed at the necklace, fingers trembling as he undid the clasp as carefully as he could in his agitated state. The last thing he wanted to do was rip it from the tan neck it hung around. Though the chain was not as important as the cross itself, Duo didn't want to damage either.

 _Clinking_  the clasp hook unlocked around the hoop and Duo flung himself off the boy, necklace crushed happily between both hands. He was shaking, sweating, breathing heavily. The pointed ends of the crucifix dug into his palm, to the point of drawing blood, but he didn't care. It was back. It was his again, and he was never going to take it off, ever.

Hunching over until his forehead rested against the dirt, Duo whispered, "Thank you."

"You didn't give me anything for it," Heero responded in a cold tone.

Lifting his head up sharply, Duo boasted, "I kissed you!"

"That was before I got it! I want something more," the blue-eyed devil explained.

Replaying the events in his head, Duo accused, "You weren't going to give it back."

"So?"

"So?!" Duo parroted. "So, why should I give you anything?"

Picking his words carefully, Heero responded in an even, unemotional voice. "If you don't, I'll hurt her again."

"Hilde." The braided man stated. It was not a question, he knew who the boy was referring to. He didn't need a full explanation.

"Yes," the dark-haired boy whispered.

Pulling himself up to stand at his full erect height, Duo walked to stand over Heero, one foot on either side of the boys midsection. "What do you want?"

"Stay away from her."

"Why?"

"Because...you're mine."

"Oh?" Duo's eyebrow cocked, head tilted dramatically to his shoulder. "Is that so?"

"Yes."

"I don't think so," the braided man ground out between gritted teeth as his foot connected with the left side of the prone boys ribcage.

Rolling on his side, Heero coughed in pain. "I'll do more than hurt her," he vowed.

Bending at the knees, Duo lowered himself to the point where he could easily clutch the blue-eyed creatures chin. "You'll do no such thing."

"You can't stop me," Heero spat back.

That was true. Duo couldn't watch over the boy all damn day and all fucking night. Grinding his teeth together, Duo weighed his options; give in or fight? Which would produce the results he desired?. Heero remained calm, unmoving, waiting. He wasn't afraid, not now. In effort to win his camp counselor over, the boy lulled his head to the side, forcing his face muscles to relax, his eyes softening, twinkling heavily lidded. Pushing his bottom lip out, Heero pouted; forcing the impression of intimidated victimhood.

Yes, it was false. Duo knew that. But the fake air of obedience made his knees close in around the boy underneath him in a tight, yearning manner. Recognizing the sign, Heero's demeanor of compliance shifted quickly into a grin of wretched supremacy. He knew he was stabbing through Duo's wall of resistnace.

That indignant grin made a fire spread through Duo's chest, awaking his inner demon. Before he could think, the braided man raised his hand and brought it down on the face of the boy beneath him.

The sting shocked Heero. It wasn't the most violent, painful slap he'd ever felt, but he'd been unprepared for it. Turning his head back, his blue eyes widen in fear and treachery. Violet eyes portrayed the same turmoil. He only slapped the people he took to bed, after he gained approval to do such an act. His body tensed tremendously, discord pinched between his shoulder blades.

Heero attempted savagely to get away, out from under Duo's grasp. In return, the braided man flexed his legs around Heero's chest, clamped a hand over his mouth to prevent an all out scream. Leaning down completely, he whispered, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" The boy kept thrashing about. "I'll do whatever you want! Just stop, please! I'm sorry!"

Permitting his body to loosen, Heero lay flat under Duo, not trusting his words. He'd heard that, the "I'm sorry" before from his father as he raped him. He fully expected Duo to continue, but as he opened his eyes, he witness violet orbs holding back tears.

"I'm sorry," Duo whispered again, removing his hand from Heero's full lips.

Apparently Duo was a better man than his father, Odin.

"Prove it," Heero seethed, angry at being victimized over, and over, and over again in one goddamn, motherfucking day.

"What do you want?" Duo asked, pressing his fingers into the corners of his eyes that dared to leak weak tears of remorse.

Heero knew he could have the man bend to his will now, but it was still too soon. If he forced the braided man to bend completely, he'd break and pull himself away. This would be a slow process, and Heero knew that. Though he wanted more than what he recieved before, Heero asked for it again.

"Another kiss," he answered.

Sighing in relief that the blue-eyed cretin didn't ask for something more demanding, Duo quickly bent his head down and attached his lips to the mouth of the boy who he wasn't suppose to ever touch. Sure, they'd done it before, but that didn't mean he wasn't feeling horribly guilty about it all. He still strived to not be like the men that had tormented him, but this kid! He was pushing all the right buttons and making him the submissive one in this back and forth dance.

Duo didn't like that.

Becoming cognizant of the shift in power, the violet eyed man allowed his demon to rise...somewhat, but hold him back enough to not traverse the boundary too much. Laying down to rest his full weight on the small body beneath, his legs straddling the outside of a small narrow waist, Duo rocked his pelvis against Heero's, who withered pathetically in response. Duo's arousal heightened substantially at how easily he was able to regain the leverage over the cunning, Prussian eyed teen. Duo almost wished Heero had requested more of him than another simple kiss. That would have allowed the demon to feast upon a more satisfying meal, while also eliminating a good deal of his virtuous side.

Wrapping his strong arms under Heero's neck, Duo flex his muscles so the boy would feel the power in his body. A subtle way of letting him know he was tangoing with an equal opponent. The only way the braided man was weak was that he'd learned sympathy, empathy as he developed into a man, but given the chance the demon would suck those humanly traits right out of him.

After allowing his tongue to plunge into illegal depths, Duo pulled back and jumped to his feet.

"That's all you get," He murmured, shaking off the delightful heady feeling that came from kissing not just someone he wasn't supposed to, but the fact that was Heero. Though the violet eyed man still refused to see it that way.

Dizzy from the oral caress, Heero found his head nodding complaisantly. His father never kissed him, never not once. Maybe that was why he wanted it again instead of something else. He had kissed the sunday school teacher, but that had been a far cry from what he experienced with Duo's mouth.

Duo left the boy laying on the ground as he stomped back into his cabin.

Shifting to his feet, the Japanese boy cursed himself for being so easily swayed. By now he was so aroused that he didn't want to move. And why should he? It was close past ten o'clock and everyone else was in their cabins. Shoving his hand into his shorts, Heero worked on bringing himself to climax as his free hand dug into dirt, the grime accumulating under his short nails. He never noticed as he panted heavily that someone else was watching him raptly.

* * *

**TBC...**


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Heero slept easily that night after bringing himself to orgasm on the ground outside Duo's cabin. He didn't give a fuck about masturbating outside, open and exposed to any prying eyes. Though he should have been, if he knew who was watching. The blue-eyed hellion hardly felt a sense of shame or remorse ever. So touching himself under his shorts while laying on the dirt didn't register in his mind as a "disgraceful" thing to do.

Waking before the morning bell, Heero tossed in his sleeping bag, aroused again by a lovely dream of the braided man. The blue-eyed beauty didn't even observe the missing item that he revered so dearly. The unconscious reverie was inextricably connected to the tied up photograph of Duo. He'd never been tied down, and evidently he'd never bind down someone else. That idea intrigued the malicious boy greatly. If he could constrict someone down to a mattress, to a post, to anything, and force them to do as he wanted, well that...that was an intoxicating thought. How would he feel being on the other end? Tied down to someone elses - Duo's - mercy. Quivering, the Japanese boy wasn't sure he'd like being at the leniency of someone else again. His father, Odin, had ripped that kind of control from his grasp, and the troubled teen wasn't sure he'd be okay with relinquishing that amount of jurisdiction willingly...only perhaps in gaining his true desire of freedom. Unless, he gave it voluntarily. But could he do that? If it meant his ultimate escape, than yes he could give up all that control. Liberty. Deliverance. Autonomy. He would give up the control for that...if only for a brief moment.

Awakening in the early morning sunlight, Heero stumbled into the bathroom in need of releasing his bladder. Pushing open the plastic latch door, Heero fumbled with his getting his penis out of his jockey briefs. His blue eyes didn't fully open until he noticed a dark mass in the toilet bowl. On first brief inspection he thought one of the other boys had shat and didn't flush, but the mass was too large. Blinking, Heero opened his eyes and expected to be faced with a disgusting scene of feces, but what he saw was far from that.

Sitting in yellow water was his - Marino's - teddy bear.

The drowsiness lifted, briskly replaced with a fuming vengeance. His arms shook in clenched fists by his waist, eyes wide, brows furrowing, his breath hitching each second. Clutching the bear by its rounded drenched soaked head, the boy balancing on the brink of destruction lifted the bear dripping wet from human defile and stalked back into the sleeping quarters.

Heero knew, he fucking  _knew_  Muller was behind this. Standing by the boys' bunk, the malevolent teen raised the degraded treasure and lifted it above his head, keeping it away from dripping on his hair. Bringing it down, the sopping wet bear  _smacked_  Muller on his slumbering face, spanking his features with urinated disgrace.

The kid twitched and jerked in his bed, eyes flying open in a daze, arms raising to protect his face. "What the..." Muller's questioning statement was cut off by a repeated  _smack_  of some wet object hitting his physiognomy, the putrid smell filling his nostrils. "What the fuck?!" he screamed, realizing he was being assaulted with something drenched in what smelled like rancid piss.

Heero continued to pummel the boy with the soiled teddy, the toilet water and urine splashing in every which way. The offensive liquid even back splashed on himself, but he raised his arm continually to bring it back down with all his force. Heero didn't give a flying shit. If anything, Muller should be happy he was using a stuffed toy to beat him, and not his bare angry blood thirsty fists. Muller began to fight back, throwing his arms through the air in hopes of hitting his attacker, kicking and flailing his legs under the sheets, screamingly loudly like a pathetic little girl. His cries so high-pitched in fearful nature it brought a cruel grin to Heero's face.

The outraged blue-eyed boy was on the brink of dropping the bear to use his clench fist in order to bust Muller's face to an unrecognizable pulp. His anger was getting the better of him. No longer thinking, only reacting. Living in the violent moment.

Before he could release the bear, multiple hands pulled him back by the shoulders, two on each side. The cries of "Stop! Stop!" filled his eardrums. His other cabin mates had awoken due to Muller's pitiable squawking.

The boys pulled him off, and Heero bolted from Cabin Weayaya in a dead sprint, practically falling over himself as he jumped over the porch and shallow steps, ran over half buried rocks and bulging tree roots. Panting so heavily to the point his breaths were audibly wheezing from his lungs, Heero ran straight to the shoreline and into the early morning freezing temperatures of Lake Erie. Gasping, the troubled teens breath stuck in his throat, choking him, the frosty waters giving him no amnesty to inhale.

At knee-length, his heavy wide splashing strides faltered sending him to topple over, plunging head first into icy morning water. Fully consumed under the frigid liquid, his full lips opened and breathed in. In his panicked raging state Heero inhaled a large portion of water into his lungs.

Pushing himself up, the moppy headed boy coughed, choking the water back up. His rage unwavering, the disturbed teen tried vainly to wash his sister's bear in the lake. Submerging the stuffed animal into the water, he wrung it until bubbles ceased to surface. Lifting it up out of the water, Heero twisted the bear, water pouring from it like multiple sink facets. Repeating the process, the dismayed teen shrieked in irritation. The bear would never be clean. Forever ruined.

"What are you doing?" Duo's voice sounded from behind Heero at the shoreline.

Snapping his head around, the boy wading in the water glared back at his camp counselor. The ruckus that the fiery blue-eyed teen made prompted Duo to wake up and investigate what was going on outside.

Duo stood barefoot in the sand, hands fisted on his hips as he waited for an answer. Dropping his glare to the water, Heero turned to face away from the man as his anger drained from him, dispersing into the chilled waters. His hands holding the head of the bear under the water, Heero roamed his thumbs over the button eyes feeling the sleek black rounded plastic. Images of his baby sister clutching the bear fluttered past his mind's eye. It dangling from her little pudgy fingers as they walked through trees in their backyard. Her holding a plastic floral tea-cup up to the bears mouth, pretending the stuffed toy drank invisible tea. Marino sneaking into his bed, bear in tow, to comfort him as he cried after an unpleasant visit from their father. Her clutching the toy, hiding under her pink bed as Odin went on a screaming rampage throwing anything and everything about the house. The bear resting beside the porcelain bathtub, his sister face down in the warm water, floating placid, unmoving.

Sensing he wasn't about to receive an answer anytime soon, the braided man asked, "Do you want to be left alone?" Heero's dark wet head nodded in the affirmative.

Walking back to his cabin, Duo felt unsure of leaving the boy in the water, but what could he do? The teen named Heero was a complicated conundrum, and if he didn't want his help, well then he'd just have to leave the distraught boy by his lonesome. He may have detested the unseen bond between them, but if Heero gave him a way out, a way to distance himself, he was surely going to take it. Especially after last nights...incident.

Teasing the bear in his hands, Heero listened to Duo's soft retreating footfalls as they molded into sand and soft dirt. Disappointed, the dark boy sunk further into the water, the level of the liquid almost equal with his shoulders. Though a large part of him wanted solitude, privacy, and respected loneliness, Heero also hoped Duo would march into the water after him. Splashing as his legs ran through the frigid temperatures, strong arms to embrace his shoulders in manner that was meant to speak unspoken words, "It's alright". A body pressed flush against his back to give physical comfort. But that didn't happen. That never happened. Except with Marino. She had been to young and innocent to understand, but her company always brought him a sense of relief. Safety. The likes of which he had not experienced since, and strived to find in the utmost inappropriate ways with other adults, male adults.

Heero pulled himself up and walked languidly from the water, sopping bear in tow. Wearing only his green under shorts, the despondent wet boy walked aimlessly into the forest. If Duo wouldn't - couldn't - conciliate his tormented soul, than no one could. Not even his friendly blond friend, whom he had mixed feelings about.

Before breakfast, Duo went into Cabin Weayaya to interrogate the other boys on what had happened. Though the blue-eyed teen hadn't said a word, the camp counselor knew there had to be some kind of altercation that got Heero so worked up. They all denied knowing anything. Muller refused to say a word when he came out of the shower, freshly dressed in clean clothes, and stripped the sheets off his bed. The intuitive camp counselor knew the auburn haired Muller boy was part of the quarrel, but he couldn't drag it out of him. Something pungent in the air hinted at what might have happened. Urine. The distinct smell consumed the room just like the dead fish had. Judging that Muller was the only freshly showered teen and was ridding his bed of damp sheets, Duo could only assume that Heero had, what? Pissed on the kid as he slept? The braided man had to cover his mouth to hide the smirk that played on his lips, but he couldn't conceal the twinkling light of humor from his eyes. He had used that same technique in a very different way, but it sufficed the same purpose. Dominance. In every carnal, animatistic way. Though a question popped in his head, if Heero did something like that, why wouldn't Muller rat him out? The blue-eyed boy would be sent home and Muller wouldn't have to deal with him anymore. Unless, Muller has something to hide.

Getting on with the day, Duo took his campers to breakfast five minutes late. Heero was absent from breakfast. Missing from the early afternoon activities. Inattentive during lunch.

After the lunch meal, the violet eyed man began to regret leaving the sapphire-eyed boy in the chilled water. He had obviously needed some kind of help, and he had simply walked away, left the boy to fester in his own agony. Though Duo desperately wanted to hunt Heero down and find him wherever he was hiding, the counselor knew he couldn't leave the rest of his campers to search for one wayward youth. And if he reported Heero's absence, then what would happen? Howard might fire him for being negligent. The violet eyed man was continually letting one of his watch-overs to wander off alone, which was more than against the rules his job indicated. 'IF A CHILD GOES MISSING REPORT IT IMMEDIATELY'. Practically rule number one. Regardless, Duo held faith that Heero would return on his own recognizance. And if he didn't...well Duo would have to march through the woods on his own to find the misguided teen. He just hoped and prayed it would not come to that. Little did he know...

The afternoon came to a close and dinner was served. Relena had asked him where her obscure friend had drifted off to, and though it was against his personal morals, Duo lied to her. He never felt comfortable lying after being caught in so many false truths. Duo told her Heero wasn't feeling well and was held up in the nurses station. After dinner, they all gathered around the campfire where the campers were allowed to tell their own spooky ghost stories.

Frustration was putting him in a bad mood. The braided man nibbled on his fingernails, bounced one leg as he anxiously waited for the dark-haired beauty to make an appearance. It was late. Past sunset, and the obviously agonized teen had not come back into the fold of Duo's flock.

"You're missing someone," Milliardo whispered in Duo's ear, causing the man to jump minutely on his seated spot on the log. He'd been so absorbed in his thoughts he hadn't noticed the blonde scoot close, almost close enough for their arms to brush against each others.

Pulling his hand from his mouth, Duo averted, "What do you mean?" Unfortunately, he was all to aware of why Milliardo had noticed Heero's truancy.

"There's a sheep missing from your herd Mr. Maxwell, or had you not noticed?" the blue-eyed blonde asked coyly.

Unable to deny the obvious, Duo lied, "He hasn't been feeling well today, so he's been sleeping."

"Right," Milliardo chuckled. "Sick." He threw a wink at the violet eyed man and pushed away to add more space between them, not wanting to insinuate anything more to what he knew.

Heart race picking up, fingers and toes curling in aggravated tension, jowls clamping shut and grinding teeth together, Duo wondered,  _/Just what the fuck was **that**_  about?/

A dark aura crept slowly around him, prickling and pinching at his flesh. The coldness, a bleak sensation that spoke volumes to Duo's inner damage child. He knew there were two kinds of abusers, two kinds of predators. Throughout his woebegone life the braided man had experienced both. One, the kind that claimed to "love" children and their desires were too great to deny the sexual want of young flesh. Two, the kind that only aimed to bring pain to a person of a significant weaker state, the kind that only wanted to destroy and tear apart the life of an innocent at the seams, crush it before it's had the chance to blossom. Duo knew he himself wasn't either, but that didn't explain the invisible strings that pulled between at him and the stunning beauty together. Deny it all he may, but he did feel a sexual attraction to Heero, which only added to his self loathing.

He was strung up by the roots between a paradox of not wanting to be like the persons whom had forced themselves upon him, and wanting to have the supple alluring Heero Yuy tied to his bed frame for his own undoing. That notion made him feel psychically sick.

He had never held these inclinations before, so why now? What was it about the dark-haired, tan fleshed, Prussian shappire eyed boy who made him quake in his shoes? He knew - without being told - that the seductive creature was singling him out through and unconscious "knowing" of their dark pasts. Duo had experienced it before. There was always something in the dead eyes of a child, the flinch away from human contact, the over sexualized nature of someone too young to know what intercourse was that could only be due to sexual mistreatment. The braided man had never faced someone so tormented, so broken, crying out for help as he had been at that same age. It made him question, what was worse? Being bounced from home to home, and touched by dark intoxicated fathers and abusive mothers? Or was it worse to live in one home to be molested by the person who gave you life? A person who should fight to protect you against all means - like his mother had until she was bludgeoned to death - he never blamed her.

The few, fading memories of her watching over him, wrapping light hearted present in traditional form under the Christmas tree that would later be called "From, Santa". The way she told him to hide under the in the closet whenever one her "new" boyfriends got too roudy and angry. He saw it all. Witness them hit her. Treat her like a piece of garbage. Claim she was a "whore", when she was far from that definition. Duo didn't need to be at the understanding age to know that claim was far from true.

The night she was murdered was the end of his safe life. Transferred between different homes, and other abused kids made him see what he really was. A lost cause with no hope. A soul without sanctuary or home. A young scared boy left to fend for himself. It took a very long time, but he figured out societal rules and how to survive when the happy reality crashed around you. He'd given love more than once a chance to blossom, but in the 1960's he found that loving another male was completely, and utterly sinful. Wrong. Always wrong. He would always be wrong. Sometimes he wondered how his mother would react to him being partically a "fag".

What if Heero was the one, and only, prepubescent he could ever be attracted to. Was that wrong? Yes. So far wrong on many levels beside the law. But, what if he could save him? Deliver the angry blue-eyed boy from the way he had been recused through understanding. Love him...maybe? The way neither of them had experienced love. It all became too much for Duo to think about, so he closed off his rampant thoughts and waited. Though Milliardo, now the braided man didn't know what to make of the Peacecraft man, but he was surely one of the two kinds of carnivorous souls. He has seen it once, and would never allow it to happen again. Milliardo didn't care for Heero the way his controversial back peddling mind did. Duo had no choice but to protect Heero from the Preacecraft man.

Finally, nine thirty came around and the campers were lead back to their respected cabins for the night. At lights out, Duo checked both cabins hoping to find Heero. The boy wasn't in Cabin Weayaya, but that was to be expected. A minute glimmer of hope at finding the dark-haired boy waiting in Cabin Apo for his blond girlfriend was squashed instantly. The boy was nowhere to be found.

Returning to his own private cabin, Duo couldn't find the will to commence his nightly ritual of music playing and weed smoking. The man sat on his bed, braid strew over his shoulder as his right hand continually gripped the base of his bound hair, pulled his hand down to the end of it, and repeated the process over, and over, and over, and over again. A nervous compulsion done in an unconscious state. He waited an hour, mind lost in a high-strung fog, before he went to check both cabins for the second time. Again, it revealed nothing.

In a moment of desperation, Duo jogged back to his cabin, found a flashlight and ran into the woods.

-Back Track-

Heavy feet lifted by weary legs, rivulets of water streaming down from the top of his head, dripping from his dark brown hair to land and flow down along his chest and back. The tiny streams of water expanded and shrank by millimeters as gravity forced the liquid downwards, flowing over his hip bones to add to the water-soaked shorts. The dark green under garments leaked a trickle of abstract water patterns to flow down his thighs and caves, and fall off the heels of his feet to be sucked into the dirt earth. Cold air made the his already chill bones frost over. Summer was suppose to be hot, but today's weather would hold a certain bite for the inappropriately attired teen.

He wasn't sure how far he'd wandered. The edges of his vision blurred together in unrecognizable hazy images; browns wafting into greens, greens fuzzing into blues and yellows. Numbness adds to his sway, creating a lax to his anesthetized swaggering hips. The twigs and rocks that scrapped harshly against his soft feet didn't register in his brains pain receptors. When you've live through excruciating pain, stepping on pointy sharp objects don't phase you unless they break the skin and permit the life blood to flow from the body.

Coming to a halt, the muddled teen place the bear down gently at the base of a tree and sat beside it. Glaring at his surroundings, Heero presumed he'd traveled a mile away from the campsite.

Critters scampered by occasionally, bringing life to forest. He didn't like it. That inner rage began to seep into his veins again, fueling the demon that lay within. Picking up a decent sized grey rock that laid half buried in the dirt by his folded feet, the blue-eyed boy gripped it with a strong force and waited for some animal to get close. An unfortunate brown wild bunny made the vital mistake of hopping out into the open.

* * *

**Graphic depiction of senseless animal abuse. If you'd like to skip ahead, there will be another block of bold words to signify the end of this scene.**

* * *

Flinging the rock with all his might, the projectile made contact with its target on the side of its little brown head. Stunned but not dead, the rabbit lay on the ground, hind legs twitching helplessly. Heero watched the animal spasm, feeling plesed with himself. Pushing himself to his feet, the boy sauntered to the bunny to stand over it. Peering apathetically down at the brown furry critter, the brown-haired boy tilted his head to his shoulder and wonder what he should do next. Finally he was given the perfect opportunity to cause something real harm. Kneeling down, he yanked on one of the long soft ears and the animal jumped back to life, kicking and high pitch wail spilling from between its bucked teeth. Disregarding that the furry little rabbit couldn't get away no matter how hard it strived for freedom - a reflection of himself - Heero smiled as he continued to play God.

Placing one hand down on the rabbits midsection, the spiteful boy picked the rock back up and extended his arm high over his head, and then brough it back down to crush the fragile skull. A sickening  _squish_  echoed loudly in the blue-eyed boys ears a nanosecond before the blood and pinkish brain matter followed, splattering against the dirt and twigs that littered the ground. In fascination, he stared at the blood matted fur, and one dark round little eyeball pushed from its socket. Looking about the ground, Heero tried to find something sharp in order to dismember the bunnies head. With no such luck, the blue-eyed devil gripped the rabbit by its crushed head and ribcage and twisted. The neck snapped before the delicate ribcage bones  _crunched_  under his fingers. While trying to literally rip off the rabbit's head, it's furry scalp and skin separated first, pouring blood over his fingers.

The crushed skull exposed, Heero twisted his fingers into the gaping neck, submerging his digits into the hot warmth of the animals insides. Two fingers under the flesh on both sides of the bunnies neck, the dark-haired boy tugged viciously, opening the squashed chest cavity. The fur and skin tissue separated easily, almost like tugging on carpet string; the sound was very much the same. More blood poured from the split midsection, landing on Heero's bent knees that rested on the earth, intestines dangling outside the body at the nave.

Breathing heavily through his nose, wrath coming to a peak, the murderous boy toss the rabbit down and shoved his right hand into the stomach area of the animal. Seizing the inner organs in his grasp, Heero pulled them completely free from the body and tightened his grasp around them until the oozed from between his digits. The variety of red was astonishing; blood-red to pink to a vivid violet red and burgundy. It was horrible and beautiful at the same time. Destroying the life of another soothed his sadism. Pacified the scourge he felt at finding his sisters teddy bear in the toilet bathing in piss.

He toyed with the dead creature for a while. Pulling out all the bones and arranging them precisely and neatly on the ground. He ripped the fur so it would lay flat and dry. Heero wanted to keep the fur as a souvenir, a token of remembrance. It was a heady intoxicating experience to end the life of another living thing. Through out the process, Heero's mouth watered and he continually licked his pink lips as the excitement grew. This is how he felt all the time. A defenseless soul at the mercy of someone more vindictive, crushed and pulled apart by other hands. Dismembered and disemboweled. It was only natural that he would want to recreate that kind of torture while being on the other side. The killer. Not the victim.

The blood and guts cooling on his hands, Heero wander about until he found a small puddle to clean the blood off in. Groundwater turning pink, the troubled boy felt at ease. Finding his way back to the bear laying against a large oak tree. Heero laid himself on the ground, tucked his hands under his head and pulled his knees up to curl himself in. Though his body and under shorts were dry now, the uncommonly cool summer air nipped at his bare flesh. Finding some sort of peace, the boy fell into a deep rest. His slumber was interrupted periodically by outside forces; more animals skimpering by, the wind picking up, and the sun going down.

* * *

**END OF SCENE**

* * *

As dusk settled into darkness, Heero attempted to get himself up,; but he flopped back down to the ground and lethargy pulled him back to sleep. His breathing became ragged as his body temperature dwindled downward to a dangerously low-level. He couldn't wake up.

-Flash Forward-

The braided man had searched for almost two hours, had to be close to midnight, and yet he still hadn't found the boy. He'd even tried calling out his name when he'd begun to panick. Keeping his pace at a light jog helped him cover a good amount of ground without over exerting himself. On the verge of giving up and returning to the camp so he could tell Howard how he'd lost one of his campers, Duo saw a glimmer of pale flesh between trees from the corner of his violet eye.

Sprinting to where he saw the pallid color, Duo found the boy laying on the earth and inhaled sharply. His normally tan skin paled in the broken moonlight from between the heavily leaved branches. Bending at the knee to rest on the balls of his feet, Duo brushed the dark bangs back from the teens face. He was cold. Too cold.

_/Oh God.../_

Pressing his right index and middle finger against the vein in the boys neck, the braided man found the faint signs of life beating underneath the soft flesh. He was in time. Barely.

Pulling Heero's arm over his neck, Duo hefted the dead weight onto his shoulder. Bringing himself to an upright position, the violet eyed man spotted the lonely childs toy resting against the base of a tree. He tossed the flashlight, the light cracking and flickering out behind him as he used his free hand to clutch the bears head and take off as fast as he could to the camp.

For once the braided man was happy that his abused past led him down the road to improve his body and strength in great amounts so he would never be victimized again. If he hadn't, carrying the full weight of one hundred and fifteen pounds on one shoulder would have hindered him greatly. Though that extra weight meant he couldn't jog as fast as he would have like, Duo still made it back to camp just under forty minutes thanks to an extra adrenaline. The blue-eyed boy drifted in and out of consciousness as he dangled upside down on Duo's shoulder.

The braided man hauled Heero into his cabin. He knew he had to take the kid to the Nurse Po, but he was only wearing green underwear. Tossing the placid boy on his mattress, Duo hastily dressed him in his own red camp shorts and a large grey cotton sweater. The clothes were much too large on Heero's slender frame, but they would have to make due. Placing both hands over the blue-eyed boys chest, Duo rubbed up and down in attempt to create friction and warmth. Heero's eyes fluttered back and forth under closed lids as a groan vibrated in his throat.

Lightly smacking his pale cheek, Duo pleaded, "Come on, kid. Wake up." All he got in response was another moan and blue eyes opening briefly before rolling in the back of his head.

Grunting, the camp counselor lifted the boy up in both arms and bolted to Sally's Nurse station that doubled as her cabin sleep quarters. Knocking loudly and frantically, Sally came to the door in a white nightgown, blue blanket pulled over her shoulders.

"What's going on?" She asked groggily.

Hefting the body in his arms, Duo said, "He's sick."

Sally hurried them both inside, and instructed the violet eyed man to place the teen on her table. Placing a thermometer in his mouth, she could tell the boy already had a fever by touching his forehead. With a stethoscope, the blond nurse listened to the rattling echo in his lungs which worried her greatly. She got Heero to momentarily awake, and he instantly began to cough hard, viscous phlegm expelled from his esophagus.

"Alright, he's showing the early signs of pneumonia," Nurse Po explained to the pacing man. "Did he just come down with this today?"

"Yeah, he was fine yesterday."

"Well, if it's spreading this quickly then he must have a very weak immune system. I can't think of any other reason for how these symptoms would come on so fast, unless he was outside in the cold for too long."

Duo paused in his stride, and stared at the Nurses back. He was afraid she'd ask what Heero'd done or where he'd been today, but the question never came.

"You need to take him to the nearest hospital. There's nothing I can do for him here," Sally said as she took the glass thermometer from between Heero's lips. His temperature was one hundred and three. "I'll inform Howard. You need to take him now."

"Alright," Duo agreed, and pulled the boy back into to his arms.

Rounding the passenger's side of his old beat up truck, Duo set the boy down gently and wished his car had lap bands to protect him. This was going to be a bumpy ride. Traveling over dirt, rocky roads to get to the nearest town wasn't going to be by far a smooth excursion. Jumping behind the wheel, Duo started the truck and it roared to life, its old motor grinding and sputtering.

Heero's head lulled against the cold window, the temperature of his forehead fogging the glass. The braided man cursed and turned on the shitty heater, which most of the time didn't work. This time he was lucky, as the old engine produced warm air. The fastest they could travel over the uneven road was fifteen miles per hour, and even that speed had the impaied boys tousled head smacking the window pane.

A particularly large bump had Heero waking up in pain, head throbbing from the illness and smashing against cold hard glass. The blue-eyed teen groaned in dismay, and Duo pulled his shoulder so his moppy head would rest against his thigh.

"Hold on, kid," Duo begged, worried as the trip seem to take longer than he reckoned to get to black asphalt roads. Heero complied easily, too exhausted to tease his counselor in his current predicament. In the back of his mind, the nauseated teen realized he was placed in a great ideal situation to torment, grope, molest his camp counselor, but he was too close to the verge of barfing to do damn near anything.

Close to an hour later, Duo pulled into the parking lot of a small town hospital. This time around, Heero was able to lean against Duo and walk feebly rather than being carried. Dragging the teen to the check-in counter, Duo spoke rapidly, "Hey, I think this kid has pneumonia. He needs medical attention. Now."

The negro nurse asked, "Are you his...brother?" (Author's Note: I know the terms "Negro", "Colored", and "Nigger" are not politically correct, but I'm trying to keep the story based in the 1960's timeline by using such terminology.)

"No. I'm his camp counselor, not related at all, and he needs medical attention. Right freakin' now."

One lucky thing about being in a small town was that the hospitals never had too many patients in the dead of night.

"Alright," the colored nurse nodded. "Fill out this paper work. Call his parents. We are going to take him now." Another nurse came through double doors with a wheelchair, placed Heero roughly in it and took rolled him away.

Duo didn't know Heero's parents number. He had to call Howard to get the information.

After a quick talk with Camp Bleska's camp president, Duo was given all the necessary information that he required. He was also informed that his job would be there when he returned. Howard encouraged the braided counselor to get ahold of Heero's parents - his father in particular - so he could return home to heal. To say he was more than grateful was an understatement. Duo needed this job before he bounced off to the next one. He wrote all the information down on a scrap of torn white paper, and when his first call ended, he dialed the number for his second phone call.

The phone rang for about half a minute before the indignant, groggy, "Hello," sounded over the line.

"Hi. Is this Mr. Yuy?" asked Duo.

A grunt sounded from the man before he replied, "Ain't no  _Mr. Yuy_ ," the man said the name as if it were a swear, "here boy. Yer talkin' to Sheriff Lowe. Now state your business fer wakin' me up at two in the goddamn mornin'."

_/Sheriff Lowe? Now why does that sound so familiar?/_ Duo questioned mentally.

"I'm you're son's camp counselor and he's -"

"What kinda trouble that bastard got 'im self inta?" Odin interjected.

"No, no trouble sir. He's -"

"Then you best keep 'im there 'til the end of da summer. I didn't pay good money fer 'im to be sent home early. Keep that lil' sonabitch." And with that final statement, the line went dead, dial tone echoing somberly in Duo's eardrum.

The twirled telephone cord that was wrapped between his fingers and around his wrist slacked. Duo disengaged the plastic material from his arm and hung the phone on its hook. Downtrodden, the braided man understood part of why Heero didn't want to go home. Who would want to return to that kind of environment? Not him, and surely not the ill teen. He made a last call back to Howard, lying that he wasn't able to reach the boys parents.

Worn out, the braided man sat in a cushioned chair in the waiting room for forty five minutes before the white Head Nurse came to speak with him. During his anticipated stay, Duo roamed his hand up and down his braid, picked at the faux wood arm rests, and tapped his left foot impatiently.

When she finally came out, Duo sat up right in his chair and waited for whatever kind of news he was about to receive while perparing for the worst.

The mousey brunette Nurse with a crooked ugly nose said, "Heero's in the early stages of bacterial pneumonia. He's going to need a lot of rest and antibiotics. Have you contacted his parents yet?"

"I tried, but there was no answer," he lied again.

"Would you mind staying for him?" she unemotionally inquired. The nurse didn't really care whether or not the braided man would stick around, but someone had to be accountable for the hospital debt.

Duo nodded his head. "Of course."

Flipping through her medical charts on a wooden clipboard, she asked with her eyes focused on the papers, "Would you like to see him?"

"Yes," the violet eyed man hissed, irritated with her lack of compassion.

The nurse, who had never revealed her name, led Duo through the double doors and through a maze of white wash hallways that held a lingering scent of disinfectant cleaning products. Entering a room at the end of one long stretched hallway, Duo was faced with the pubescent boy hooked up with a breathing tube in his nostrils, and other questionable machines. (Author's Note: Through my research, I found the first heart rate monitor wasn't invented until 1975, so Heero does not have any loud beeping machines hooked up to him. If you know something I don't about the medical procedures of this time, please tell me.)

Duo pushed the dark brown locks from the boys face. He still had a fever, but he no longer resembled a ghost, his regular color returned faintly. Finally, a sense of relief pulsed heavily through his frame, making his limbs numb and weak. Duo collapsed in the one vacant chair at Heero's bedside, and he cracked his neck to release more bodily tension.

After a few moments of relaxed silence, the distant nurse came into the room and informed the braided man that if he could not reach the patients parents, he would have to pay for the medical bill.

That wasn't something he could afford. He'd saved a lot of money over the years from odd jobs, but medical billing were ridiculously expensive.

"What can I do?" he asked, violet eyes boring fiery bullets in the nurses plain face.

She didn't look up from her brown clipboard as she stated, "You can take him home now and pay, or reimburse the hospital in the morning."

"What's more expensive?"

"The morning," she answered, flipping through the papers in front of her none caring gaze.

Rolling his shoulder's irritably, he claimed, "I'll take him now."

Another twenty minutes passed as Duo paid for the room, the procedures they had done, and for the boys' prescription drugs before hefting the partly comatose boy back into his arms for the umpteenth time. Heero dangled in his hold like a wet noodle, which partically broke Duo's semi-emapatheic heart.

Driving the short distance to Ashtabula County, the camp counselor carried the sickly teen up to his second floor apartment room that resided over a popular breakfast restaurant. The owners of the building were the proprietor of the restaurant whom sublet the upstairs space. Though they would never admit it, their one and only son was a homosexual, whom they kicked out of their home at eighteen. The old couple felt guilty for distancing their one and only son who disappeared off to the west, never to hear from him again. They didn't know, but the assumed, Duo was "a gay". So they rented the space to him without discrimination in hopes of easing their conscious. But it would never soothe their self-reproach for sending off their child.

Placing Heero gently on his mattress under a red blanket, Duo tried to find comfort in his personal space. It was fruitless. Especially when he glanced at the shivering form of the young boy under the fleece cover.

Honestly, he was more than exhausted. His limbs weighed down heavily as if fifty weighed dumbbells hung from around his joints, his neck ached from stiffness, his head pulsed with untold wariness, his violet eyes drooped due to lack of needed rest. The braided man tried to make himself comfortable in the caramel cushioned arm-chair he'd bought second-hand from a thrift store, but once again, for the millionth fucking time, his feat was to no avail.

Soft eyes peering from underneath weighted lids, finding sight through out of focus dark fuzzy lashes, he stared warmly at the bedridden, quivering teen. Duo eased himself up out of his uncomfortable position from the chair and tip-toed to the mattress on the floor. It was a tiny twin mattress, really only big enough to hold one body. But the violet eyed man wormed his way under the covers to curl himself under the trembling boy. He pulled Heero to lay partly on him, arm tossed over his broad chest, dark soft head buried in juncture of his neck and shoulder. The violet eyed man knew he'd be uncomfortable and tense in the morning at waking up in his day clothes, but at the moment, he really didn't give a damn. Heero latched onto him like a breathing life line, fingers scratching lightly at his shirt covered peck, head nestling further into his neck, aggressive quavering palliatively soothing to a dull shiver. Unconsciously, a tiny smile graced his lips as he snuggled his chin into Heero's chocolate-brown hair.

* * *

**TBC...**

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

Camp Bleska

Chapter Seven

Grey yellow light filtered softly through the dingy flat. A block of sunshine rested along Duo's right cheek, changing the blackness he saw behind closed lids to bright orange. It woke him up. Stretching his tight sore limbs, the braided man felt the heavy weight on his left shoulder that had made his entire arm numb. Looking down into shiny dark hair, recollections of the night prior flooded his mind. Easing himself gently off the mattress, the violet-eyed man groaned painfully as blood rushed back into his limb. That pin pricking, needle sticking, aching tingling sensation ran from his shoulder joint to the tips of his long fingers. Flexing his digits and rolling his arm in a wide circle, Duo stumbled to his small bathroom.

After he urinated Duo checked briefly on the slumbering boy. His skin was gaining its natural graces, cheeks lightly pink, but when he placed a hand to his forehead, pushing the bangs out-of-the-way, Duo could feel the lingering temperature of a fever. Heero no longer shook like a leaf under the warmth of the blanket, and the braided man knew they would both need nourishment soon. Leaving his flat, the twenty year old man jogged down the stairs and into the restaurant below. He held a short conversation with Mrs. Gerald, the proprietor of the breakfast inn. The kindly elderly sad woman gave him a plate of eggs and bacon, which he feveredly devoured. Afterwards - claiming he was taking care of an ill friend - she gifted him with three cans of Campbell's chicken noodle soup. Stomping loudly back up the stairs, Duo pushed through the threshold and was gifted with the sight of something he wished he didn't find so enticing. Heero lay twisted amongst the blankets, back exposed, underwear riding low on his bottom, blue cotton fabric entwined between his thin legs and wrapped around his narrow neck. If the twenty year old had sauntered in nonchalantly he'd assume the teen naked, but he knew Heero was...somewhat dressed beneath the cloaks of a warm sheet.

Setting the plastic bag full of his acquired items down as gently as possible on the faux wood counter, Duo tiptoed to the mattress on the floor. His intentions were to cover the boys back and half exposed bottom. Clenching his jaws tight enough for them to  _crunch_  against one another, the braided man succumbed to his sinister desires. Running the second knuckle of his middle finger down along the bumpy spine, trailing down to the top of the teens buttocks, Duo paused. Fighting with himself, the camp consoulers restraint faultered...and he dragged that middle knuckle past the bounds of Heero's hips, along his crack, and when he reached the magic spot, Duo unfold his finger to allow the pad of the digit to circle around the opening, push forward to tease to spot between, and massage lightly with deft a finger along the back of the boys sack. A faint natural moisture surrounded the boys privates and the violet-eyed man had to snuff out the dark desire and force his hand away from the boy. Heero whined in his sleep, pushed back against the hand between his cheeks, slumbering face cringing in unsatisfied sexual stimulation.

Panting heavily through gripped teeth, Duo yanked his hand away from Heero's placid body. Stumbling to the tiny, closet-like room of a bathroom - there wasn't even a door to close - Duo jabbed his left elbow into the wall, hunched over at the waist, and clutched his crotch with his right hand, and almost vomited. These feelings made him weak and nauseous. They made him feel dirty and wrong. They made him feel like...like a  _monster_ _._ The violet-eyed man understood that pedophiles were part of a vicious circle of learned behavior; if you were abused, you were more likely to abuse. But he had never had these inclinations before! Why now?! Why him?! Why Heero?!

After pouring a small amount of bile from his facial orifice, Duo slumped to his knees on the hardwood floor. Self-loathing brought tears to his eyes, which flowed hotly down his rounded cheeks in silence. He was sick. He was evil. He was the  ** _monster_**.

Duo sat in the bathroom, staring up at the smooth white ceiling that yellowed in the corners. He contemplated his life and how he had come to be the person he is now. Memories of one of the few abusive mothers flooded his mind. Racking his brain, he couldn't remember her name, but she ordered all the children to call her "Ma'am", and she ruled over them with an iron fist and a wooden spoon. For whatever reason, Ma'am was vicious towards the boys and doted on all the girls. Abrasive and rebellious even at the age of seven, Duo was her  _favorite_  to inflict her frustrations upon.

According to Ma'am, he was born bad because he was born a boy. Whenever he was caught doing something "bad", Ma'am would inflict her punishment on the genitalia region. Spanks between the legs, not permitting him to use the restroom to the point where he would have to wet himself, and when he was really a "naughty, filthy demon seed" she would bind rough, prickly twine around his sexual organs, tying it off as firmly as she could. Ma'am would force the little Duo to sit and wait for her to deem him forgiven by the Lord and unbind his private parts. This was one of the many reasons why he  _had_  to be the dominate person during sex. Vulnerability didn't come easy, never would. Reflecting on this moment of his miserable existence made the braided twenty year old man believe Ma'am may have been right in some aspect. If he wanted to touch Heero, a willowy boy of thirteen, than he was probably that filthy demon seed. A pitiful groan echoed off the walls and yanked Duo himself from his unconscious pity party. Pushing himself off the cold hardwood floor, the violet-eyed man stepped backwards from the bathroom and stumbled to the cushioned armchair in the room.

Peeling his eyes open, the sick boy moaned again. "I don't feel good," Heero rasped, his face looking a little green in hue. Eyes bugging out of his skull, Duo pivoted on his heels and ran into the kitchen, grabbed the small waste basket and hauled ass back to teen. The second the rim of the sea-foam green trashcan reached his shaky boys grasp, Heero vomited into it. Holding onto the side, Duo fought the urge to throw up with the teen as the sound and smell of the bile hit his senses like a cinder block. Such a different experience being the vomiter and the person holding the bucket. Obviously, Heero wasn't happy about the situation either. A brief moment ago he'd been in the thralls of an enticing dream, waking up half cocked; sitting up had been his biggest folly. Sweat breaking out over his face and chest, body tensing, and stomach clenching with the force of a violent storm, the blue-eyed boy had to fight the need to defecate while his body spewed his stomach contents from his mouth.

Dry heaving, Duo took the trashcan back to the bathroom and dumped the fowl contents. He left it in the tiny room after flushing the waste. On the mattress, Heero had curled himself into a tiny ball, as small as he could physically make himself while laying on his side. Empathy washed over Duo like a cold shower as he watched the shivering frame tremble pitifully under the fleece blanket. The boy needed more clothing. Rifling through his meager clothes, the braided man found slightly dirty grey sweatpants and a black sweater. Helping the boy change, Duo attempted vainly to reframe from touch his heated skin with his torturous fingers.

Shrouded in proper clothing, Heero crawled out of the bed and lazily stumbled to the bathroom. Stopping at the threshold, Heero turned to look at Duo. "There's no door," he stated flatly.

"Yeah, I know."

"Where is it?"

Shrugging, the braided man answered, "I have no idea. There never has never been a door there."

Glaring weakly at the dirty toilet in the poorly lit tiny room, Heero slunked his head to the left and found the bathtub slash shower with a tattered clear plastic curtain in what most people would designate as the kitchen. Throwing his head gently back to the right, his ill blue eyes shimmered with a hint of laughter. "You live in a strange place."

"Yeah," Duo drug the word out a couple of syllables, nodding his head. "You try to live on your own money and find a decent place to live in this shit hole town, and then you can tell me how nice your apartment is."

A short snort escaped Heero's nose, but that little imitation of humor rocked his bowels and the teen dashed into the tiny room which held no door. Yanking the sweats and under garments down, Heero twisted and  _plunked_  down on the toilet seat. If he had been in better health, the teen may have been more embarrassed for his noisy, liquid excretion, but in his state of ailment - for lack of a better phrase - resulted in him giving no fucks.  _Slapping_ his hand over his mouth, cringing in further disgust, Duo mentally relieved  _/Well, at least I don't really want to touch him now./_

Huffing, the Japanese teen felt so much more alleviated and cleaned himself up before dragging his feet back to the bed. If he could have, he would have blushed. The braided object of his unwholesome desires eyed him warily as he stood by the one and only window in the apartment. His toes hit the mattress on the floor and the teen unceremoniously collapsed onto the caved in, god-knows how old springy bed. Heero regretted it instantly the second his knees made contact, pushed through the cushion and banged against the wooden floor boards. A keening groan pushed its way up and out of his mouth in pain.

"Hey, hey," Duo scolded, "Take it easy, kiddo." During his outburst he'd come to kneel by the bed and brush the dark chocolate locks from Heero's fevered face. "I got some soup for ya if yer hungry." The teen shook his head in the negative, the thought of food made him want to barf and shit all over again.

"Tea?" Duo offered kindly, though he had no tea in his studio. Again, Heero shook his head against the white cotton pillow case. "Go back to sleep, you need the rest."

Turning his head softly, Heero peered through half lidded eyes and asked, "Will you lay with me again?" Mentally he cringed for how pathetic he sounded, but he desperately wanted the comfort...the likes of which he'd never received when he'd been ill before. At this point, he wasn't even trying to seduce his camp counselor, just needed, wanted someone close.

"If you'd like...I co-could read to you until you fall asleep," Duo stammered, and then in a haste of unjustified self-conciousness he yammered out in what could be misconstrued as a sentence with no breaks between each word, "I left my record player at the camp, so I can't play any music, but I have a lot of books and I can read something to you until you fall asleep or are ready to eat, which ever comes first. You know, doesn't matter. I've got a lot of classics and some modern novels, I always loved books as a kid, a great way to -"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay! Fucking read to me," Heero muttered loudly, voice muffled from his mouth being partly enveloped in the pillow case.

 _/What the hell is wrong with me?/_  Duo asked himself and pulled open the bottom drawer of his dresser. Inside, the drawer was filled with books rather than clothes. (A.N. my bottom dresser drawer is filled with a retard amount of art supplies, therefore Duo does the same with his books.) Rifling through his gathered, pack-rat like collection, the braided man grasped one of his favorites. A dark brown bound book that contained poems from a great American classic mind. Walt Whitman. He smirked fondly down at the book and knew just which poem he would read to the ill teen.

Complying with Heero's request, the violet-eyed man snuggled close up next to the boys minutely quivering shoulders. Folding the book open with and audible  _creek_ , the sent of paper, ink, and dust reached his nostrils. The archaic smell of the pages soothed his tensions, eased his discomfort. Finding his most favored passage, Duo began, "Pioneers. O' Pioneers! Come my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready..." The rhyme was recited aloud for less than ten minutes, and the braided man felt the boy slump against in him steady sleep, but refused to shut his mouth until the full length of the poem had fallen from his voice. "Swift! To the head of the army!-Swift! Spring to your places! Pioneers. O' Pioneers!" Though the last statement required the reader to exclaim its last words, the violet-eyed man spoke them softly, allowing the phrases to roll of the tip of his tongue smoothly in effort to not wake the boy who had drifted off to sleep in the beginning of the poem.

Closing the brown leather book, Duo thumbed the engraved faux gold lettering, the pad of his thumb tracing the indentation of the title. Placing the book gently on the floor, in attempt to avoid a loud  _thunk_ _,_ the camp counselor placed the book of poems on the ground, turned his body so his chest rested flush against Heero's back, and buried his face into soft, slightly damp hair. After reading the poem, the man had grown slightly fatigued, and succumbed to a mid morning slumber with his nostrils filled with pheromones of certain forbidden fruit. In the dark recesses of his subconscious mind, Heero never felt so safe...

Two hours passed, it was one in the afternoon, and the ailed teen pushed himself from the normally would-be-welcomed embrace. It was too heated, his temperature reaching a high point. Laying on the cold wood floor without a cover, the blue-eyed boy slumped back into sleep before...before three minutes later his stomach decided it was time to spew again. This time he couldn't move. He had no energy, no strength, no will. Feeling like a new-born fawn, Heero hated himself for being the weak limbed, rubber like doll that he'd become thanks to falling asleep out in the woods; he'd been so dumb.

Laying on the chilled splintered wood floor, the teen threw up. A strong grasp clenched both his shoulders and lifted him inches off the floor.

"Jesus Christ kid! Couldn't you have made it to the bathroom?!"

All Heero could do in reply was vomit more liquid yellow bile to the floor.

Once he was done, Duo tucked the teen back onto the mattress, cleaned the defile from the floor with not so subtle gagging, and made peach tea for himself and the pale boy. Elbows resting against hard white tiles, forehead pressed between the thumb and index finger, Duo groaned softly, irritated at the fact that he'd become a full-time babysitter. Heero had finally expressed his need to consume food rather than disperse it, so a small pot of boiling Campbell's chicken noodle simmered on the stove. He stared at the white washed wall in order to ignore the painful moans of the boy coming from his bed.

"You needa eat," the braided man stated.

"'Kay," Heero intoned, not caring.

Stirring a wooden spoon in the pot of chicken soup a distant memory - nearly forgotten memory came to life in his mind's eye. When he'd lived with his mother, the young violet-eyed boy was always soothed by his mom, whom spoon fed him soup whist sleeved warmly in a tub of heated water. The counselor shook his head viciously to dispel the painfully happy memory. What was the point of finding solace in fleeting memories when most of his childhood had been wrapped in the devils dark embrace? Pushing it all from his mind, compartmentalizing; Duo drawled, "You wanna eat it while bathing in the tub?"

Heero planned to answer with a noncommittal shrug, but instead coughed painfully until his already sore throat rawed over in comparison to a desert denied rain water from the Gods for ages. Taking the initiative, Duo turned on the stove, placed down a black pot, dumped a can of Chicken Noodle Soup into the pot, and twisted the hot water knob on the bathtub. Heated water flowed through the lime stained facet faster than the stove heated the soup. It audibly bubbled up in the off white, not so clean tub. Not once had Duo used Clorox to clean any surface in his dingy apartment; why would he since no one ever came over with the slight deviation of someone coming by for a good old fashion role in the sheets?

Pot of soup coming to a boil, bathtub heating up, Duo hefted the frail boy into his arms. At first he refused to be placed into the tub until his sick - in more than one way - mind found an advantage to this predicament. Panting heavily, lungs wheezing in distress, coughing pitifully, the blue-eyed teen allowed himself to be stripped of all clothing by the braided man, and he delicately pushed his hips backwards when Duo bent at the waist to pull down his under garment. The devious teen wished he could have been more sexually alluring, but in his state of health, all he could do was lean his back against the muscled chest of the braided man as he removed each item of clothing one by one. Duo laced his arms under Heero's knees, hefted him up into the air, and intended to place him compassionately in the heated water.

"OW!" the dark-haired tousled boy screamed. The water that surrounded his toes was the same temperature as Hell Fire. It may have been his chilled or high temperature skin, but the bath water felt like molten lava. His knees flinched upwards, weak arms tightened around Duo's neck, and the blue-eyed boy tried ineffectively to crunch his body up into the muscled arms that held him.

Irritated - by many factors - by the nude body in his grasp, the counselor leaned down, opened his arms wide and allowed the body to fall like a cinder block from his arms into the bathtub, theorizing that Heero was playing him in some shape or form. The ill teen screeched loudly, hot water back splashed on his lower jean clad legs and the braided man knew his mistake instantly. Coughing painfully, Heero gripped the side of the porcelain tub and flung himself out and onto the floor. Landing with a  _ploosh_ , Heero continued to sorely cough against the cool hardwood floor.

"I'm sorry!" Duo burst. "I didn't me to drop you into boiling water!" Turning the second knob, cold water rushed out of the facet to mix with the hot water.

Swatting the soothing hand away, Heero belted, "Don't touch me!"

Feebly he attempted to crawl away, but it was all in vain. Duo was bigger, stronger and prevented him from slinking along the hardwood floor. As sick as he was, the blue-eyed teen attempted ineffectively to be free of all bodily comfort.

The second his bare chest hit the chilled wood planks Heero regretted moving away. He'd lived a life cold indifference and wished for nothing more than to folded in a warm, accepting embrace. The only thing weighing him down to the floor was his own fears and insecurities. How could anyone care for him unconditionally? He was a woe begotten child of abuse that no one wanted. So crawl away he tried...

Why would Duo be any different be any different from the rest?

Reaching down into his sick mind, Heero confronted the desire. The need to be a one and only, the most important thing, the highly cherished soul he never was. Was it so wrong to want that? Wrong to wish for love that crossed out all the negative constituents that made him who he was. He wasn't that bad...was he? Maybe he was too far gone for requited love. Too damaged and rough around the edges for unconditional affection. Too cynical and malevolent for open and honest understanding. Maybe he was wrong in ever sense of the word. Utterly and irrevocably wrong.

Lying on the barren cooled floor, the blue-eyed teen gave into his insecurities and wept pitifully for himself.

Bewildered, the camp consoler had no idea what was going on. He assumed the boy was crying from being carelessly dropped into the bathtub filled with inhumanly hot water. Whispering his apologizes, he picked up the sobbing boy and set him gently laid him in the tub after checking to make sure the heat of it no longer resembled volcanic temperatures. Heero kept his head bent in shame long after the tears of diffidence came to an end, afraid that the man scrubbing him with a beaten and worn out dishcloth would decipher his longings through his vacant blue eyes.

The remainder of the afternoon and evening was spent in tensed silence. Duo had already recited a litany of apologizes that of which gained no response from the boy who was lost along a trail of self-reproaching thoughts. They split the soup, and climbed into bed only to find the blue-eyed boy running for the restroom and not quiet making it before he heaved again. Duo plucked the teen from the floor and swaddled him tightly in the blankets before cleaning up after him.

Cocooned in warmth, Heero's heavy lids claimed his tired eyes and plummeted him into a deep restful sleep.

Tossing the vomit soaked rag into the sink to be cleaned later, Duo came to stand at the edge of the bed, and gazed benignly down at the slumbering, no longer trembling teen. He had used all three blankets to swathe the boy and didn't regret it. Finding an old - probably dirty - yellow towel, the braided man yanked the hair tie from the end of his braid, shook it out, and big spooned the ill boy with the nasty ratty yellow towel as his only source of protection from the cool night air.

Awakening the next morning at early sunrise, the Japanese teen found his face muffled against Duo's chest. Smirking and feeling more lively than previous day, Heero tried to move his arms in hopes of massaging the violet-eyed man through his pants, but found himself stuck. Jostling his shoulders, he tried to gain purchase and freedom to no avail. Duo had swaddled him up tightly like a new-born babe. Amazed at how confined he was amongst blankets, Heero gave mental perks to Duo for immobilizing him as he wiggled about for delivery. His early desire to grope his camp consoler died as soon as the want for free movement presided, and he began to struggle with greater effort.

Waking up uncomfortably, Duo opened his wide eyes to find the struggling teen trying to break for freedom. Smirking tiredly in the early morning hour, Duo watched bemused for about half a minute before offering to help. Unwrapping the boy and laughing at his expense, Duo found himself hovering over the blue-eyed teen, legs straddling his hips with his hands planted on either side of the kids head. For a brief moment they gazed uncertaintly in each others eyes. Heero lurched himself up and pressed his needy lips against the violet-eyed mans.

Yanking his whole body back with every ounce of force, Duo attempted to dislodged himself from Heero, but the boy hung on tight like a monkey clinging to a tree limb, which only succeed in flipping their positions.

"Quit that shit!" Duo hollered up at Heero's face.

Running his slim fingers down the center of the violet-eyed mans chest, stomach, and lastly down his groin, Heero traced Duo's semi-arousal between the middle and fourth finger of his right hand, and with dark hooded eyes solicited, "Do you really want me to stop? I think your body is telling a different story from your mouth."

Smacking those lustful hands away with an audible  _slap_ , Duo attempted to feebly restrain himself. He knew if he allowed the contact to continue he would buckle under the strain, the wish, the desire. But the righteous side of him is what prevented him from becoming the unwholesome person he fought against. If...if he authorized the touching then he would quickly fall head first into a world he had no aspirations to be apart of.

In retaliation, Heero rested his elbows in the mattress and pushed his waist down to grind laboriously against Duo's.

"Stop it!" the braided man scolded as he gripped the teens hips and pushed him up in the air and flung him off.

Rolling himself to the opposite side, the counselor landed on his back hard cold wood flooring before scrambling away. On all fours, Duo panted heavily, glaring at the dark-haired teen from his side vision. Suddenly, seeing that fiendish grin plumping up the boys cheeks made his anger bubble over. He wasn't going to admit defeat without a fight. Rage getting the better of him, Duo latched his large hands around the boys neck. Squeezing, he frothed as he shook the teen by his slender neck, raising him up off the mattress and slamming him back down, "What do you want from me, you lil' shit?!"

His death grip continued to the point of unconsciousness. Suffocating, the Japanese teen slipped under the realm of blackness without the fear of dying. He had pushed the limits, shoved them far past there breaking point, could he blame Duo for seeking compensation? Fear didn't even register in the blue-eyed boys mind before falling into the darkness, staring into angry violet eyes before his closed.

Releasing Heero's neck, Duo panicked for a moment until he realized the teen was still breathing. In a fit of self-loathing frustration he punched himself in the side of the head three times viciously, not holding back his exasperation. His temper always got him into trouble and brought a great amount of contrite with it after the fact. Outrage unsatisfied, the braided man leapt from the mattress, paced irascibly back and forth three steps in each direction before sending his fist into the wall, crumbling the plaster under his force.  _/Fuck!/_ He was going to have to pay for that to be fixed if he wanted his deposit back. Sucking on his bruised knuckles, the violet-eyed man glared at the boy on his bed. How in fucking hell had a summer job turned into the greatest test of his resistances and self-control? For Christs sake, all he needed this job for what to hold him over until the next one. The second Fall began he had another job lined up; trucking. Driving from coast to coast and making delivers, living on his own by his own means. Really, it was a dream for a high school fuck-up who couldn't afford to attend junior college, much less a four-year institution of higher education. If Duo wanted to see the world - more specifically, the States - this would be his only open avenue to do so.

Incapable of palliating his fury, the braided man dressed in a hurry and marched out of his apartment. At this moment, he didn't give a rats ass about leaving the sick kid he'd almost strangled to death alone in his loft.

Opening his eyes from sleep for the second time this day, Heero pushed himself up off the mattress and found himself alone and that it was very late in the afternoon. Remembering what had transpired, the blue-eyed teen wasn't all that concerned about being on his own for a while. He knew Duo would have to come back at some point. If anything, this was the perfect window of opportunity to rummage through his counselors belongings.

Firstly, he needed to use the restroom and eat a full can of soup. After relieving himself, the teen inspected his reflection in the cracked, dried water spackled mirror. Turning his head from side to side, running his left hand down his cheek, Heero was relieved that he was looking better even though he was still marginally paler than his usual tone. Added on top of his healing, he smirked at the finger size bruises on the side of his neck. For some reason the Japanese boy treasured the marks he'd gain from the braided man, wherein the past he hated all marks he'd been gifted at the hands of his father. The wayward kid consumed his bowl of soup while sitting cross-legged on the counter, eyeing the room in boredom and figuring where something juicy would be hidden. There really wasn't much of anything in the studio apartment. Besides the mattress a tall beaten, dark wood dresser stood in the corner of the room, and a nappy looking arm-chair placed adjacent to that dresser. Seemed everything Duo owned came second-hand, or possibly third or fourth.

Leaving the red ceramic bowl in the sink, the curious teen jumped from the counter and walked up to the dresser. He already knew the bottom drawer to be filled with books, so he reckoned there wasn't anything of interest to be found there. Fishing about, the Japanese boy was disappointed that his snooping yield nothing. About to give up, something itched in the back of his mind and compelled him to check the drawers again. This time around, the blue-eyed boy noticed the top drawer was shallower than the rest. Tossing all the clothing out onto the floor in one big heap, Heero jimmed the false bottom of the drawer up and found more than what he was searching for.

Black rope frayed around the edges and worn from use. Two sets of steel hand cuffs glittering the light; one of which had a longer chain than the other. A ridding crop, the likes of which Heero knew to used on horses. A wooden paddle, smoothed and sanded to a soft finish. A whip with several strips made from black leather, and the blue-eyed boy stared curiously at it, not understanding its purpose. Strange metallic things with clamps, connected by a chains that resembled torture devices. A metal ring too large for a finger. A steel bar with four cuff like circles on it. A black strap with a red ball in the center, and Heero inferred it was used for gagging a person. Steel rods that were the length and width of chopsticks. Two gold balls on a string; for some irrational reason or another, Heero was piqued greatly by the gilded spheres. And a bright blue penile object attached to a cord that was meant to be plugged into a wall. Seeking out an outlet, Heero plugged the device in and the cylindrical thing buzzed in his hand, causing his eyes to open wide in shock. Dropping the vibrator like a hot potato, Heero stared wide-eyed and mouth agape at the humming sex toy bouncing on the floor. Hastily unplugging the light blue thing, the Japanese boy threw it back in the drawer, fitted the fake bottom back in place, tossed the clothes back in and slammed it shut.

Back pressed against the dresser, the astonishment began to fade away and suddenly a ridiculously large grin spread across his face before hysterical laughter poured from his mouth that bubbled up from the pit of his stomach. The sound of his incessant giggling reverberated off the walls as he hunched over at the waist and wrapped his arms around his abdomen. Collapsing to his knees, the blue-eyed boy doubled over. He wasn't sure what it was he found so humorous, but there was no stopping his guffawing. Laughing and laughing and laughing until his sides were sore, Heero opened his blue eyes to gaze at the ceiling - smile still in place, and he felt a sense of comical happiness he wasn't accustomed to. He spent the rest of the day rifling through the books until Duo came home. "Home", a foreign word that never gave him so much comfort before.

It was well past dusk before Duo stumbled through the front door and nearly faltered over his feet to land on his face; the wall broke and saved him from his tumble. After running from his apartment, the violet-eyed man escaped to his favorite watering hole and consumed copious amounts of liquor and food. Driving home had been a bit of challenge since his intoxicated vision weaved the roads to and fro, blurring the lines and shifted them from the far right to the far left. Parking his car, his red rimmed eyes landed on the charred, smelly teddy bear. Plucking it up off the floor of his truck, the braided man staggered up the stairs to his apartment, and flung open his door with the stuffed bear in hand.

"You're drunk." Duo heard the boy state cumbersomely as he closed the door and leaned against it.

Bubbling, the violet-eyed man boasted a short laugh before answering, "Yuh bitch. I'm wasded."

Sauntering over to the mattress, Duo fell haphazardly onto it with the bear pinned under his chest, and paid no mind to the boy sitting at the end who held his copy of "The Sound and the Fury" in his lap. Grinning evilly, the manipulating boy straddled the object of his desire, sat on his rear, and bunched his shirt up. "You need to relax," Heero soothed as he pressed his palms into Duo's shoulder blades.

The chestnut haired man groaned loudly in appreciation, broadening Heero's grin. Massaging the tight muscles that created the violet-eyed mans back until he whined pleasurably, Heero rubbed from the top of his shoulders down to the hem of his jeans. Knowing Duo was far too cozy to veto his attention, Heero lowered his face and grazed his nose down the mans spine between his shoulder blades. A sensual throaty groan vibrated in his throat, and a moment later Duo felt the carnal caress of full pink lips laying feathery kisses along the center of his back. Panting sensually, the drunk camp counselor melted like a burning candle under a hot flame; a flame with an intense blazing blue core.

Lapping and rolling his tongue over the spine which protruded delicately through layers of muscle and skin, Heero virtually made out with Duo's back while his hands continued to knead the braided mans shoulders. The taste of his flesh was heady, the minute perspiration a delicious nectar that made his toes curl, the smell of him a distinctively male aroma which perfumed his immediate air with enticing pheromones. Kissing and nipping his way up to the man's ear, Heero traced the back of it with his tongue and teased the shell with his teeth.

Feeling confident enough, the lustful blue-eyed boy whispered, "You have quite the collection of... _toys_ ," he chuckled and continued, "I found your hiding place."

Moaning against the mattress, right booted foot languidly tracing circles on the floor similar to a happy cat swishing its fluffy tail, Duo responded, "Did you now?"

"Yes," Heero hissed hotly in his ear. "They're all in your top dresser drawer."

"Well, aren't you the lil snoopy detective?" the complacent braided man mumbled.

The aroused Japanese teen mumbled while pressing his groin against Duo's ass, "Oh, yes I am." A pitiful broken groan pressed forth from the counselors lips, and Heero pressed his hips down with more force. "Tell me what they're for," he requested.

Giggling drunkenly, Duo asked, "You dun know what any of them are fur, do you?"

"Do too," he lied and lightly smacked the back of Duo's braided head.

"Hit me again and I'll whip you wif my cat o' nine tails," he warned while laughing, his body bouncing lightly against the makings of the mattress.

The dark-haired teen asked, "Which one is that?"

"See," Duo pointed out, "you dun know wha' any of them are." The blue-eyed teen was wafted with the sensation of feeling self-conscious, so he sunk his jagged fingernails into Duo's mid-back, making him groan and twist in displeasure, but his laughter didn't subside. "If you want to know," Duo probed the boy's interest, "juss ax and I'll tell you wuh they're fer."

Gulping, Heero decided to start with the most elusive item. Most of the others he could fathom what their purpose was, but one in particular befuddled him. "What do the gold balls do?" he questioned, feeling the heat gain purchase amongst his cheeks even though Duo's violet gaze wasn't staring directly at him.

Duo didn't have to turn his head to see the teens discomfort, but he laughed regardless. "The Ben Wa Balls? You want to know what they're fer?" He felt Heero nod his dark tousled head against the base of his neck. "Shove dem up yer ass und you tell me wha' they're fer," Duo teased. With his face nuzzled half against his ratty mattress, the violet-eyed man never fathomed Heero to abide by his drunken taunt. But to his surprise, Heero bounced off him and skipped to the dresser.

Jiggling the false bottom free without removing the clothes, the eager, heart pounding boy removed the plank of wood and grasped the gold circles in his hand. Running back to Duo, his feet patter-pounding on the floor, the Japanese boy enthusiastically kneeled on the beaten mattress and inquired, "You're going to watch, right?"

Turning to lay on his side, folding one arm under his head, eyes shimmering with amusement, Duo drunkenly smirked and answered, "Yeah, babe. I'll watsh." In his highly inebriated state, the braided man found no qualms with watching the boy as long as he reframed from touching.

Shifting the golden balls in his hand, slender fingers tracing over their gilded circumference, the blue-eyed boy nervously pulled his shorts down and pressed the first gold ball to his entrance and cringed.

Drunk off his ass as he was, vision turning, swirling, and tumbling; Duo recollected that the boy was approaching this experience in a painful way. "Stop, stop," he pleaded quietly, pushing himself up on his wavering elbows. "It's gon' hur' if ya do eh that whey," he advised.

Uncertain, the brightly blushing blue-eyed boy squeaked embarassedly, "How am I doing it wrong?"

"Ya need lube," the braided man answered with a sloppy shrug.

"Lube?"

"There's a tube of it in the drawer you discovered," Duo helped.

Scrambling chagrined, Heero found the vessel that contained water-like clear liquid. Duo instructed him to pour it on the golden balls, which he followed but still felt unsure. Never in his past sexual experiences had he used such a thing called "lubricant"; spit eased the discomfort of penetration, which is what Odin formly used on him. Hand full of this slimy stuff called "lube", the edgy Japanese boy rub the greasy liquid over the two balls and waited for further instruction even though he knew what was to come next. He was insecure, that much was for sure, but he refused to blatantly display his irresolution on his face. There was something about engaging Duo that made him nervous in an area he never had been before.

In the mean time, the sloshed counselor pushed himself up to rest his back against the wall and mattress while patiently waiting for Heero to go further underway his lofty promise. His toothy domineering grin brought a twinkle to his drunk amethyst gaze for there before his eyes sat Heero, kneeling on the edge of his bed with no clothes, fumbling over how to lube and use the yellow balls in his grasp. His cock twitched despite his impaired state; his left hand reached down instinctively to rub his stiffening cock through his jeans. Heero appeared pleased by this reaction, so Duo gripped himself as much as he could through the thick material and groaned, rolling his head softly against the wall.

The balls in his grasp had been well slickened for sometime, but Heero was struck by arrest; fear of the unknown. This little display he was involved in was nothing akin to what he'd done before. Usually all it took was for his father to drunkenly stumble in his room, or for him to solicit another grown man by coming on hot, heavy, and willing. Obviously, Duo was slash, is a tad different. He required more involvement, dedication, perversion. Placing the first slippery gold ball to his hole, Heero used his middle finger to push it in past the ring of muscle; moaning loudly at the new sensation, he fought to keep his blue eyes open and pinned on the man watching him.

The sphere stretched his opening, wide at the diameter and past that point it was sucked into his body easily. Once inside, his thighs began to shake, hips twitching in accommodation, spine tingling with pleasure and his abdomen fluttering. With his brows furrowed and pinching in what could be designated as a frown, Heero silently asked Duo what to do next. The braided man whispered, "Push in the second ball." He gained immense satisfaction from the convulsing and perspiring boy in front of him. Heero followed the order and whence it was complete, he whined like an abused dog; cock painfully hard and jolting within the cool air.

"Did you know that Ben Wa balls have been used for centuries?" the violet-eyed man questioned, leaned forward and tugged lightly on the string that dangled between the boys legs.

Heero squeaked terribly, "Don't do that!"

"Don't do what?" Duo asked sarcastically and yanked on the string, halfway dislodging the first ball from the teens passage.

"That!" Heero cried.

"What? This?" Duo asked sardonically, as he pulled softly on the string.

"Yes, that!" the sun-kissed boy whimpered. He'd been fucked plenty enough but the pull out was always the worst, it resembled too much like shitting on the toilet and was his least favorite part of sex. "Please don't," he begged, but to much of his humiliation Duo pulled harder, removing the ball from his naughty hole and a groan-ish cry fell from his mouth.

Duo appeased, "It's fine." He knew - even in his drunken state of mind - that he was taking advantage of the yummy, supple youth, but for once the righteous side of his mind was numbed beyond all considerate belief; too far gone to steer him back down the lawful path. Pushing himself away, resting against the two pillows on the mattress, most of Duo's friendly atmosphere disappeared and something more sinister cloaked him in a blanket of ambiguity.

"Push it back in," he demanded evenly.

Trembling, the blue-eyed boy sucked in a large lungful of oxygen, took command of his quaking body, forced it to still, pierced his eyes into Duo's and obliged the command bestowed upon him. Forcing the second ball back into his cavity, his blue eyes rolled back in their sockets; lids fluttering unconsciously from lotus-eating hedonism. Sucking air through his teeth, Heero completed the task and rested both arms at his sides, waiting for further instruction.

Duo's violet gaze appraised the kneeling boy, smirking at the gold string dangling between his legs, as he spread his black jean clad legs a little wider in effort to accommodate his fully stiffened arousal. Feeling too hot for comfort, Duo removed his shirt, flung it to the side, and ordered, "Touch yourself."

Sliding his hand down his mildly dampened chest, the blue-eyed teen obeyed languorously, having finally found the confidence to continue without uneasiness. Gripping the base of his dick, Heero slowly masturbated himself for Duo's viewing pleasure while his free hand mindlessly pressed over his beating heart, and his eyes drifted back and forth between Duo's face and his pumping fist. Unwavering gratification swallowed the teen whole as he saw the unambiguous lechery that kept violet eyes mesmerized on his body.

"Use both hands," Duo whispered, licked his lips and fought the impulse to fondle himself, and more importantly, the craving to mount the dark-haired boy like an unhinged animal.

Following orders, Heero placed his unencumbered hand between his spread legs, caressing his testes and using the tips of his digits to add pressure to his engorged taint. All the added stimulation caused his rectum to spasm, constricting around the ben wa balls. The pooling tension heightened in his loins, causing his pants to pitch to moans, shoulder to quake, and his hand to fly faster over his cock.

Biting the middle knuckle on his left index finger, Duo waited for the boy to climax. "Open your eyes and keep them on me," was his final command, and none too late for the second Heero's sapphire gaze transfixed on him the boy came, his seed gushing onto the sheets. Resting back on his hunches, Heero shook in his post-orgasmic bliss, the blush on his cheeks fading slowly.

Indulging in one final gander, Duo drank in every detail displayed before him. The way Heero's eyes fluttered. The manner in which his flesh glistened with a fine layer of sweat, adding a soft gold tone to his tawny skin. The way his heavy breathing contracted his muscles making the shadows more defined as they danced across his living body. The lewd way the gold string was still visible even though the adolescent sat back on his folded legs.

Pushing himself up, Duo leaned forward and maneuvered one hand between Heero's legs. A fleeting moment of eye contact sufficed all unspoken words, and the blue-eyed boy reclined slightly, lifted his hips, giving silent permission. Gently gripping the string, Duo ran his thumb over its gold woven threads and pulled lightly. Heero whined as the first nugget stretched his opening and broke free. His reaction was identical for the second gold ball. The violet-eyed man clutched both spheres in his hand, and marveled at how intimately warm they were. Freed from the intrusion, the Japanese teenager slumped like a sack of potatoes to the floor. Rolling the balls in his palm, the braided man inched his face closer to Heero's, proffering all signals that he was about to kiss him, but when the boy mimic his movements, the violet-eyed man smirked brazenly and pulled back, jumped to his feet, and swaggered over to the bathroom.

Dumfounded, Heero gawked at Duo's muscled back and sashaying braid as he disappeared into the tiny bathroom. Yanking his sweat pants back on, the dark-haired boy scrambled to the threshold which lacked a door. Pressing both hands against the door frame, the teen bent slightly at the waist and watched Duo from behind as he pleasured himself.

"I can do that for you," said Heero, mouth-watering for his desire to touch the man who jerked himself off energetically.

"Uh huh," Duo breathed. "But I ain't gon' let you." He kept his eyes fixed on his cock, playing everything he'd just witnessed over and over and over in his head until he came violently into the toilet, throwing his head back, arching his spine and moaning loudly.

Zipping his pants back up, the violet-eyed man turned and shoved Heero out of his way with a thrust from his shoulder. He was still fairly intoxicated, a little less so, but drunk nonetheless. Flopping onto the mattress, Duo twisted the blankets to cover himself and promptly fell asleep. Though he was fairly disappointed, Heero stomped out the negative feelings and focused on the things he'd gain; his counselors unbidden, lustful attention.

Snuggling up on Duo's backside, Heero unbound his waterfall of hair and big spooned the man he prayed would one day save him from his tortured life. A little over an hour later, his blue eyes fell closed and his mind drifted into a complex dream world created of his greatest fears and hopes.

Obviously, waking up the next morning was a painful for the braided man since a blinding headache was sure to ensue after a heavy night of drinking. Half of his hair hung loose, tangled like a rat's nest behind his left ear, and his eyes were blood-shot and tired. Rolling off the mattress, Duo crawled with his eyes closed tightly towards the kitchen, but along the way his right knee landed on the ben wa balls, delaying his journey. Plunking the gold balls off the ground by the string, the braided man eyed the sex toy and boy sleeping soundly in his bed. All the pervious nights actions swarmed back to him instantly.

"Oh, fuck," he groaned and muttered to himself, "Way to go, Maxwell. Hope you enjoy hell you sick son of a bitch."

Dropping the balls back onto the floor with a clatter, the violet-eyed man struggled to his feet, and made his way to the kitchen counter and filled a glass with water from the tap. He downed three glasses of water, half-heartedly glaring at Heero from across the room. As mad as he was at the Japanese boy, his frustrations doubled when reflecting on his own conduct. Feeling filthy to the core, Duo twisted the shower knobs and stepped out of his jeans which he'd uncomfortably slept in since bringing the kid to his apartment.

The  _pitter-patter_  of water hitting the porcelain tub stirred Heero from his slumber, and he rolled over onto his side just in time to see Duo step naked - completely nude with the exception of his gold cross - into the bathtub. Through the clear shower curtain, the blue-eyed teen diligently watched Duo's every move. Hankering for a closer look, Heero edged himself off the bed and situated himself on the counter by the sink - at most two feet away from the showering man - folded his legs and rested his elbows on his knees, chin cradled in both hands. Duo knew he was being observed by the teen and kept his back turned to him as much as possible. Rinsing the shampoo from his hair, the violet-eyed man caught a glimpse of Heero through a tear in the shower curtain and was taken aback by the expression in Prussian orbs. The customary grim atmosphere was nonexistent around the kid, and the level of lust was far less intense than normal, but rather an open softness and light curiosity was plainly manifested on his features.

For some obscure reason, that honest expression made Duo shudder under the hot shower spray. It was as if the a veil that enclosed the menacing teen had been lifted and exposed a gentler, more ordinary side which proved to the violet-eyed man that the kid could be every bit as normal as any other thirteen year old. Turning off the shower, Duo wrung the water from his hair, grabbed a washed out orange towl and wrapped it around his waist and then flung the translucent shower curtain open. Their eyes met, staring candidly as some kind of kinetic energy electrified the air, almost as if they were daring the other to speak, drive some sort of delayed action into movement, but no steps were taken. The silent willful demands of their calm state of being didn't resonate as awkward or strained, but rather a telepathic acknowledgement of something they couldn't place their finger on.

Eventually, Duo stepped deftly out of the tub and walked to his dresser, his feet hardly making a sound as he treaded the short distance to his destination, all the while blue eyes following his every movement. Along the way, the consoler bent to pick the sex toy off the floor and placed it back in its rightful hiding spot before retrieving a black t-shirt and dark blue jeans. Heero followed his steps a minute later and nestled himself in the stained caramel armchair. He wasn't trying to be invasive or rude or even deceitful in his usual over sexualized manner; he simply wanted to be close enough to observe every single solitary detail of Duo; the fashion in which his body worked as he moved; the way his muscles flexed with the simplest of tasks; the way his hair darkened while damp and how it looked released from it braid, dripping crystal tear drops to the floor, and catalogue it all in his mind.

Unwrapping the towel, the violet-eyed man paused and thought for a moment, but instantly disregarded the question he would have asked. Obviously, asking  _'Are you going to watch me change?'_  would have been answered with a matter-of-fact  _yes_ , so what was the point of asking to begin with? In the absence of unconfident-ness, Duo dropped the ratty orange towel and bared it all...as if the kid hadn't seen it already through the curtain while he bathed.  _  
_

Dressing easily - in no hurry to rush the normal ritual - Duo donned all his clothes and sat back down on the mattress with his back pressed against the wall. The Japanese boy continued his silent observing until Duo - while brushing the length of his chestnut hair - asked in a fairly straightforward, rude and insensitive approached, "When was the first time your dad fucked you?"

Diverting his gaze from his silken hair, Duo looked over to Heero and all the quiet comfort evaporated. The cold, angry, violent gaze that greeted him left a sense of fear in the violet-eyed man's bones.  _/Shit._ / He thought to himself, knowing his absentminded question had struck a harsh chord. And really, he should have known better since he'd gone through similar experiences, but he refused to apologize for his bluntness or exhibit his remorse on his face.

Ferocity, peril, and brutality swirled in unblinking blue eyes like a violent raging oceanic storm. His body tense, rigid as if it were a deadly arrow about to be set free from an Indian's archaic bow, destined to hit its intended target with deadly force. Heero felt his breath caught in his throat, jaws clamp shut, heart beat hitch in his chest; his mood drastically shift in a nanosecond as he panted like an angry bull through his nostrils.

Fumbling, Duo added, "Or it could have been an Uncle or some other close family relative, but I'm right...am I not?" He cursed his forthright nature, it always made others uncomfortable and proceeded to get him into touchy subjects that he didn't mean to. It was simply his inquisitive nature, ever wondering, ever wanting to understand and express appreciation and compassion that led him to these awkward situations. Hell, it had happened more than once or twice with other individuals. Most people didn't find his frankness and honest curiosity as innocent, but rather a nosey plain-speaking manner of impolite trespassing.

Asking evenly in a dark, ominous tone, Heero questioned, "Why would you ask me something like that?"

"Because you've clearly been fucked before," Duo answered with a shrug, forgoing all gentleness and consideration - it was amazing how he could flip like a switch, and cut off all his small empathetic facades. "You live with your parents," he pointed out, "So my best guess is that your  _Daddy_  messed you up good."

"Shut up."

Eyebrow twitching and rising high in amusement, Duo queried, "Is this too touchy for a strong boy like yourself to answer?"

Before he knew it, before he could stop, before he could calm himself and think, Heero's fists clenched, exposing the white knuckled bones that lay beneath; and he jumped from the armchair like a rocket-propelled by highly flammable fuel. Two strides and he was at the edge of the bed. A second later his knees fell to the mattress. Within the blink of an eye, his fist launched through the air and callously punched Duo in the face.

Much to the violet-eyed man's surprise, the boys bite was much more vicious and painful than his bark. Heero got a few well-aimed jabs to Duo's face and upper chest before the man gripped both his wrists, twisted them together, and rolled them both over onto their sides which placed them partially off the mattress. With his fists captured in Duo's stronger grasp, Heero proceeded to kick and grunt like the provoked animal he is.

"Knock it off, kid," Duo gruffed. "You ain't the only who got screwed over as a kid!"

"The hell you know about it!" Heero yelled back, continuing to fight pointlessly since Duo had pretty much wrangled him down.

Hollering back, Duo said, "More than you think! Now, knock this shit off!"

He shoved Heero away from him, the boy resting on his side as the two glared into each others eyes, puffing out short harsh breaths from their short skirmish.

"If you know so much," Heero huffed angrily, "then enlighten me."

Closing off the emotional side of his revelation, Duo candidly stated, "My first foster-father fucked me there were no girls left in the house. I guess I was the closest thing to feminine in the house since I've had long hair since I was a kid."

Heero felt his jowls clamp so tightly that only the jaws-of-life could have pried them open. Astounded by the man's candor, Heero rotated to lay on his other side, away from Duo's piercing stare. Not by far had he expected that kind of honest disclosure, and he was at a loss to reciprocate. He'd never met someone else who'd suffered from the same kind of maltreatment as he, and Heero was torn between wanting to requite and feeling the need to hold everything up inside himself, behind the wall that no one was allowed to glance over.

Duo reached his hand out, ran the soft tips of his fingers down the back of Heero's neck and soothed, "Don't hide. Don't run. Don't lie. I already know without you saying anything more."

 _/Well, if you already know, asshole./_  Heero thought as he jadedly shrugged Duo's hand off his body. It was one thing to find recognition in someone else who'd been dealt the same tortured hand, another to openly concede it, and the thirteen year old boy wasn't ready for that step just yet.

Silence once again filled the space between the two individuals only this time it wasn't so neutral. They ate in soundless apathy and danced around each other with compulsory delicateness in order to avoid one another.

Around nine in the evening it dawned on Duo that the kid was fine, healthy, and he no longer had to stay away from the camp. "We're going back tonight," the braided man stated, steadfast.

Heero nodded his head once in compliance, not giving a damn about anything anymore. They gathered the few items they'd brought on that night Heero fell ill. The blue-eyed boy clutched his sister's teddy bear tightly under his right arm.

Walking down the stairs, Duo tossed the kid his car keys and instructed him to wait in the vehicle until he got there. At a payphone located just outside the ground floor door, Duo dialed his dealer.  _/Might as well stock up./_  He fathomed knowing the stash of weed he had back in his cabin wouldn't last the duration of another seven weeks; especially not when he had Heero watching his every goddamn move. The guy answered, Duo told him he wanted to pick up, the guy was more than willing as long as Duo had the money, which he did.

Heero sat in the cold passengers seat with the bear held tightly to his chest. Not understanding how he felt, the only word that seemed to fit was: Numb. Duo climbed in behind the wheel and a moment later, they were off.

Five minutes later they detoured down a dirt road, which the dark-haired boy knew wasn't the designated path for their journey back to the campsite, but he didn't say anything.

They pulled up in front of shanty house, Duo killed the engine and ferociously told him to stay in the car. He had a good idea of what was going on, Heero'd been lugged by his father to many liquor stores and was ordered the same phrase, 'stay here, you little shit.' Okay, so the turn of phrase was slightly different, but the overall meaning was the same. So sit and wait he did, with the teddy hugged close to his breastplate for his only comfort.

Inside the beat down shack of a house, Duo found his dealer amongst the cesspool of forgotten and beaten souls. The black lights illuminated everything and everyone in a distorted perspective that Duo would have loved and appreciated if he hadn't had a prepubescent waiting for him in his truck. Handing over the money and talking loudly over the music which played unbelievably deafening from a record player, the violet-eyed man gained his purchase. Before he could leave his dealer presented him with a myth drug that had only been heard of, and few had tried.

"Snort this shit!" His dealer shouted, gesturing at the large rectangular mirror on the table.

Eyeing the three lines of white powder cut into three equal lines, Duo asked, "What is it?"

"Ever hear of cocaine?"

"Yeah, is this it?"

"Yeah dude. It's righteous!"

His dealer handed him a rolled up dollar bill and directed him on how to consume the mystery narcotic. It was fairly simple, as easy for a numbnut to complete. Kneeling down before the table, black light illuminating the powder in an eerie white tint, Duo placed one end of the bills inside the fold of his right nostril, the other to the end of one of the dust lines on the table, and he inhaled it quickly.

It was harsh. It was crude. It burned a little. It was good.

His preconceived notions and the rumors he'd heard about the drug couldn't hold a candle to the actual experience. Talcum hitting his brain faster than weed ever could, Duo gasped and breathed in a sharp breath through his mouth with his head tossed back. Closing the nostril he'd just used, Duo sniffed again, not letting the talc to fall from his orifice. His head began to buzz, every limb shuddering with pleasure, eyes rolling back in untold ecstasy.

"Ya want more?" his dealer asked.

"Yeah," the braided man sighed, continuing to sniff any and all remnants of the dust in his nose in hopes of getting higher.

His dealer chuckled, "Ayo dude, you got more money?"

"Yes," Duo hissed as his high hit a new level. It wasn't as wasted as he could get, and he knew that and wanted more.

While paying for one gram of cocaine his friendly dealer gave him two more free lines, and with each consumption Duo fell further in love. It was like no other drug he'd experienced. Yeah, he'd taken LSD twice, but the break from reality didn't sit well with him. All that resulted in was psychologically loosing control. Weed was safe. And apparently he could keep his wits about him while flying sky-high on cocaine...it would many years before he realized the simple, innocent, harmless looking powder was just as dangerous, if not more so, than any other drug.

Climbing back in the truck, Duo grinned widely at Heero and the boy knew there was something different about him. He asked, and got no honest reply.

By and by, the drive came to an end and both males leapt from the vehicle. Duo walked into his cabin and collapsed on his bed. Mind ablaze, he dived into self-pleasure which included the rare action of penetrating himself. After being used and abused so many times, it was difficult for him to find pleasure in something or someone going inside him, but right now, with his mind tumbling and pulsing in arrogance, he found the desire and will to finger fuck his hole gently.

Heero on the other hand walked up to the screen door of Cabin Apo in effort to spy Relena. Duo's erratic actions and wild eyes on the drive back had uneased him, and the blue-eyed boy wanted nothing more than to curl up beside her like he used to do with Marino. A soft breeze chilled his bones, prompting him to seek out his respective cabin and climb beneath the sheet that hadn't been slept in, in three nights.

When they would wake up tomorrow, one with a unrecognizable numbness, grumpiness; the other sensing a loss for unfounded reasons.

It would be day eleven

* * *

**TBC...**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUN FACTS: (Because I love to share my acquired knowledge lol.)
> 
> 1\. Campbell's Soup started in NJ in 1869. NO WONDER Warhol used the product for his popart! It's been around for-fucking-ever.
> 
> 2\. If you don't know it already, the poem Duo reads to Heero is "Pioneers. O Pinoneers!" By Walt Whitman. If you do not know this beautiful poem, you can look it up and read it or listen to it on You Tube.
> 
> 3\. Cocaine has been around/available for ages, long before it was synthesized by the German chemist Albert Niemann. Banned in the 1920's, it didn't gain extreme public use again until the 1970's.


	8. Chapter 8

Camp Bleska

Chapter 8

A bell tolled, rang again, and rang again. Pushing his face off the bed, Duo glared squinty eyed out the window, and damned the sound that stirred him from his needed slumber. His head pulsed similar to that of a hangover but not so severe, it was more dull and made him quite withdrawn and uncaring to his surrounds. Realizing he was back at the camp, Duo forced himself to dress and re-braid his hair quickly. Desperately he wanted to roll another joint, which he'd done last night before falling asleep, to ease his abstractly frazzled nerves.

Outside the violet-eyed man found his twelve campers waiting for him, and he led the march to the Mess Hall with sluggish feet.

The second her blue eyes fixated on Heero, Relena bounced over to him and squealed, "I missed you!" Wrapping her slender, pale arms around his neck, she squeezed tightly, ecstatically. The past three days had left her to wallow in a fit of misery; she had no idea what had become of her cherished, quiet friend and her big heart bled for the boy in his absence.

At first Heero didn't know how to respond to an intense, open, overwhelmingly joyful reaction caused by his mere attendance, but as the blonde girl hung tightly to him, he found himself returning the gesture. Bundling his arms around her waist, his blue eyes closed, and he hugged her just as fiercely, nose imbedded in her silky clean yellow hair. The _pure_ scent of her raised his spirit. But that relief would only last for fleeting seconds.

Lifting his eyelids, an invisible itch told the blue-eyed creature he was being watched. Seeking out the source, Heero found himself situated underneath Sylvia's knowing, blank stare. Neither angry or fearful, she gazed blankly at the boy who had assaulted her. For once, Heero felt an ounce of regret weighed down in the bottom of his gut. He'd done wrong - abused the girl and recognized that empty leer as a fault of his own. Regardless of how little remorse he felt, the supple teen knew he'd intimidate the girl into silence again if need be. Hugging Relena more tightly, he vowed that she never be exposed to the unwholesome side of Heero Lowe-Yuy. Shamming a seething glare, Heero pierced Sylvia's eyes with a threatening glance that made her look and walk away, head hung low.

"I missed you, too," Heero murmured in Relena's ear, brushing his lips along the shell of her appendage, unintentionally heightening her hormones.

Giggling awkwardly, blushing brightly, she pulled away from the embrace as her left hand flew to trace the ear teased by her crush. The cheery blonde smiled bashfully and said, "Don't you go getting sick on me again."

He smirked down at her. "I'll do my best."

Eating their breakfast, Relena chattered nonstop, barely breathing between her words as she enthusiastically told Heero all he had missed in great, vivid detail. From the opposite end of their table, Muller glared disdainfully; already scheming his next act of retribution. Every so often, Heero would throw a fearsome death glare back at the boy when his blonde friend would turn her gaze to her food for a millisecond, take a bite, chew, and then continue to ramble with her mouth full.

On the other side of the room Duo picked at his scrambled eggs and hash browns, not really in the mood for eating, but he downed glass after glass of orange juice. Taking no part in the conversation with the other counselors, Duo contemplated back on the three days spent in the company of the blue-eyed boy. Acknowledging too many lines had been crossed, the braided man reached the conclusion that he couldn't be alone with the kid again, for something more consequential would surely happen.

Outside the early day was quickly swelling; proving the sun was beaming down to create a hot, sticky afternoon. Howard and a few other Latino hired helpers set up six volleyball nets along the lengths of the sandy shoreline. It was important to keep the kids active and moving, lest they become bored and create trouble. Campers and counselor alike were given thirty minutes of down time to digest their meals before participating in the sport.

Separating the kids equally, - three boys and three girls to each team of six - Duo deliberately placed Heero and Relena on the same team, and Muller, Trant and Thaddeus on the other. A concise rundown of the rules and quick demonstration on how to serve, pass, set, and spike allowed the violet-eyed man to sit back and watch the game unfold with the rest of the counselors at a shady table situated nearby where they all could observe from.

Sitting at the far edge away from everyone else, Duo rubbed his eyes and temples with the tips of his fingers. The strange after effects of the come-down were beginning to fade, permitting him to feel somewhat normal again, but it wasn't fast enough. To make matters worse, Milliardo plunked down beside him, wood bench _creaking_ under his weight.

"So," the blond man chuckled. "How was your little vacation with the Jap boy?"

Huffing irritably, Duo argued, "Was no damn vacation. He was sick. I took care of him. End of story."

"I find that hard to believe." Milliardo smirked and drank from his water bottle.

"And why is that?"

"Because if it were the truth, you wouldn't be so cross about it."

Rolling his violet-eyes, the braided man questioned soreheadedly, "Just what the fuck do you think happened?"

Smiling a toothy grin, eyes twinkling darkly, Milliardo whispered, "Now that's something only _you_ can tell _me_."

Eye to eye, Duo scowled and the Peacecraft mans' grin widened. As the staring match continued, Duo curled his toes in his shoes, hands clenched into white knuckled fists, the heat of the summer air added kerosene to his inner fire. Chuckling darkly, the blond man forfeited the staring contest, stood up, and rejoined the other counselors mingling at the opposite end of the table. Agitated, Duo marched off in the direction of his cabin. He needed five minutes alone to gather his nerves.

On the second court from the left in a row of six, Heero spiked the cushioned volleyball and narrowly missed hitting Muller in the face. Their game surpassed friendly sportsmanship the instant the first serve was thrown into the air. Muller and his posse generated a united force with the added help of Miss Catalonia. Her competitive nature thrived in most of the sports she played, but her strong suit was fencing. Relena played fairly well alongside Heero and the two other boys on their team. She wasn't as invested in the game as the others, and she strived to be an active player, unlike Sylvia and the redheaded girl on their team who stood in the back of the court and dodged the ball whenever it got too close to them. Anne was much the same on Muller's team. They were tied, two-to-two, and the game grew more fierce.

Concealed in his private bathroom, the violet-eyed man dumped a small amount of chunky white dust onto the bathroom counter, chopped the larger pieces with a razor blade, shaped the drug into one thin line, rolled up a two dollar bill (1), and in one swift motion he inhaled the narcotic through the banknote. Up the nose and straight into the dome. That's all it took and the burn is bearable, more of an uncomfortable tickle. Less than half a minute and the fuzzy tingling in his head change from being a nuisance to extraordinary. Tilting his head backwards, Duo inhaled sharply a few more times, making sure none of the residue escaped. As the euphoria crept up his vertebra, the braided man cracked his knuckles, rolled his shoulders, and cracked his neck. Pressing his fingertips into his brow ridge, Duo pushed his hands upward into his bangs, nails scratched his scalp while he breathed out a shaky, aroused moan. _/Un-fucking-believable./_ Spirit lifted tenfold, Duo went back outside a new man.

The volleyball games continued for the best of three. Duo's group was the last finish; the opposing teams treating the average sport game as if it were a match to the death. At Muller's last serve, he hoisted the ball high into the air and smacked it clear over the net in the direction of Relena, betting on her being their weakest link.

Watching the ball fall from the sky like a comet, Relena grasped in a nanosecond that she was going to have to dive for it to save the game. Feet digging into the sand, the blonde girl lunged herself forward with all her might, her body falling through the air. Knees grinding into the grainy ground, hands cupped and stretched far out in front of her, she fell to the ground with her eyes fixed on the target. The ball missed her wrist by an inch, plopped into the sand and bounced away.

Relena heard the irritated groans and shouts of failure from her teammates, but her brilliant blue eyes sought out those of a deeper, richer hue.

Growling, Heero kicked the ground, punched the air and pivoted around to try and hide his frustration from her. But she saw, she saw his angry, pink cheeked, sweaty face grimace. A wave of self-condemnation broke over her fragile frame as she pushed herself to her feet, brushed the sand from her knees, elbows, and clothes. Looking through the net, the disappointed girl watched her oldest frenemy jump up and down with ecstatic joy, hooting and hollering loudly. _/She's always friggin' wins. Always./_ Poor Relena couldn't fight off the green monster: jealousy.

Lifting his glare from the ground, Heero found his camp counselor watching him. He took three steps in his direction, but Duo turned and marched over to the other adults and quickly engaged the others in conversation. Puzzled, the blue-eyed boy allowed the man to have his clearly maneuvered avoidance tactic succeed. He didn't believe such behavior would last long. After all, they had formed a rather strong, enticing bond over the three days they'd spent together...handn't they?

Until the lunch bell told, the campers were allowed to mix and mingle on the beach without the permission to swim. Relena wanted to apologize for her folly, but she wasn't give the opportunity. After the game, Heero wandered off and found that sitting along back of his cabin was nice secluded spot. Tired and irked, the teen found the idea of continuing human interaction rather depleting - though normal people required the basic interaction with others as a necessity - of a falsified front that he, more often than not, displayed to appear normal.

The lunch meal progressed without incident. Free time to swim and splash in Lake Eerie was much the same. The only thing that registered as odd in Heero's dark mind was how the violet-eyed man repeatedly steered away from him and refused to hold eye contact for more than a passing moment.

At dinner time Heero kept quiet, adding to Relena's distress, but she sensed his attention was elsewhere. The dark-haired boy glared fiendishly at Duo. He could only handle being ignored to a certain extent, and having gained zero attention from the man throughout the day was starting to rub the boy the wrong way; awaking his vengeful side. Maybe this was his punishment for being contemptuous towards the braided man when he'd asked about his father. Duo had divulged miniscule insight to his bleak, painful past and Heero in return had said nothing. He didn't take kindly to those who tried to figure him out. It made the situation much too personal, but on the other hand, he wished to know Duo through and through, inside and out, front to back. Still, the idea of candidly talking about what he'd experienced made his skin crawl, stomach turn, and produced a mild headache.

Instead of the usual ritual of story-telling around the campfire, the teens were hauled into the auditorium for a more academic ending to the day. Slide after slide from an ancient projector illustrated the different constellations in preparation for the next nights activity: stargazing.

Thirty minutes after lights out, the blue-eyed boy snuck out of Cabin Weayaya and made a b-line for his counselors cabin. The lights were off, and the entire cabin was entirely black thanks to sky holding no moon, but Heero sensed Duo wasn't there. Walking inside and to the edge of the bed confirmed his sixth sense. Bolting from the cottage, Heero dodged and weaved through the dark, stepping as light as he could on dried fallen leaves, twigs, sand and dirt. Eventually, at the very last cabin, Heero spied Duo in Wufei's cabin among his and Hilde's company. The three of them appeared to be enthralled in an exciting, hilarious conversation. Knowing he couldn't extract the braided man for his own purposes, Heero angrily marched back to his bed, punching each tree he passed in an ineffectual effort to release his pent-up exasperation.

Halfway to his cabin a voice stopped him dead in his tracks.

"What are you doing out here alone?"

Turning his head slowly, Heero appraised the man with long blond hair standing on his porch smoking a cigarette. For some inexplicable reason, Milliardo's atmosphere harbored none of the malign nature he'd exhibited before when he briefly groped the dark-haired boy. Taking a trusting step towards the man, Heero responded, "Just walking."

"You're out past curfew, mister," Milliardo teased. "Are you looking for someone?" he asked evasively. He'd watched silently as Heero passed before, observed him outside Wufei's window. Before that he'd seen Duo walk with the Schribieker girl to the Chinese man's cottage. He was no idiot. He knew exactly what was going on. And if all played out well, he could manipulate the situation to favor his own twisted, malevolent desires.

"No," Heero lied.

"Well, you should get back to bed before someone tattles on you."

Tilting his head to his right shoulder, Heero questioned, "You're not going to report me?"

"No. Now go before you get caught by someone more honorable," the blond man chuckled.

Not wasting time, Heero took off. While running he wondered how _that_ particular man could so capriciously change the aura around him. He didn't trust him, per se, but an ingenious idea sparked in calculating head. If he couldn't get to Duo, he make the man come to him. All he needed to do was reroute his outward appearance to show infatuations with the Peacecraft man, and that would hopefully ignite some sort of baser, territorial, carnal instinct of domain in Duo. And then all would be as it should be...

After a dinner he consumed half of, Duo inhaled two more lines of cocaine. The high from earlier lasted perhaps half an hour in retrospect. He realized he was going to have to micro-manage his use and conserve his supply, because a gram of this shit was disappearing faster than a gram of his weed. _/Maybe I'm makin' my lines too big./_ He thought after he breathed in the second row of white powder dust. Hilde came to his cabin, per his request, after lights out. They chatted idly for five or so minutes before he disappeared back into the bathroom to lick the tip of pinkie finger, dip it into his stash, and rub the residue along his upper gums, thrice. After that they walked to Wufei's cabin. His decision. He didn't want that demon kid to see Hilde in his private cabin again. Plus, Wufei had a bottle of vodka that he offered to share.

Wufei, Hilde, and Duo talked amicably about several different topics over the course of three hours. Duo's words and gesture entertained with his erratic, turbulent nature before the "downing" nature of alcohol leveled his high out. His acquaintances failed to recognize the inebriated state he was in, and simply prescribed it to his boastful persona. Despite how the evening came to be, Duo hadn't planned on spending it high and drunk. All he wanted was to be away from his room because he had an itching feeling that a certain _someone_ would be stopping by, and by doing this, he was steering clear of that inevitable encounter.

Half past midnight, the violet-eyed man staggered back to his cabin, blurry-eyed and spinning. Kicking off his shoes and removing his shorts, Duo slept soundly under a thin sheet in the sweltering heat of a summer night.

Something stirred him from his slumber much too early, far sooner than the morning bell. Shifting, he couldn't move and his crusted eyes peeled open to gaze blankly out the blind closed window which authorized the grey blue morning light to seep through the slits. Mid yawn Duo heard the voice he didn't - most of him didn't - want to hear.

"Why are you avoiding me?" asked Heero.

The presumptuous blue-eyed cretin was sitting atop his half conscious body, treating him as if he were a backwards chair.

He grumbled, "The fuck, kid?"

"Answer my question," Heero demanded evenly.

"I don' have ta answer shit to you," Duo grumbled, forced his body to turn on his side, which almost sent Heero rolling off him.

"Just give me an answer and I'll go," the teen fibbed.

"Pft, yeah right, and LBJ is going to be reelected. Get the hell outta here."

"Lyndon B. Johnson is a far better candidate than Barry Goldwater, so your point is invalid. Answer me."

Crabby in the early morning, Duo scolded, "I just want to get away from you, you freak!"

That outburst made the blue-eyed boy lurch back, and it strummed a harsh chord he wasn't aware was open and vulnerable to plucking. Breathing hotly through his nose, grinding his teeth together, and snarling down at Duo and his sloppy, sleep messy braid, Heero seethed, "Fuck you."

"Yeah, fuck you too, kid," Duo sighed, practically falling asleep as the half Japanese boy removed himself from Duo's personal space and cabin all together, which allowed the twenty year old to sleep for the remaining hour and a half.

Day twelve progressed much like the last. Duo evading Heero at all costs as if he were the bubonic plague, and the teen growing more and more incandescent, baffled even, by his counselor's obvious antics. His ego was bruised. How could Duo have the audacity to ignore him and push him away now? No one he held an interest in treated him this way, no one. By the grace of God and the Devil, Heero would have his way. If he had known the penalty for his wishes, he most likely would have let the matter go and accepted failure...but an individual like him didn't learn much from defeat.

In the hours between breakfast and lunch the campers were forced upon another hike, which in the stifling hot sun seemed more like an act of pointless torture than a fun, exciting activity. This time Duo's troupe was paired up with Wufei's and after an hour and half of marching through the trees, the group took a forty-five minute break.

"Alright, when you hear the whistle blow," Wufei demonstrated by blowing into the metal instrument, sampling the high-pitched sound that echoed off the hillsides, "you're all to come back. Don't wander off far or alone, and watch out for snakes." The Chinese man sat down on a large, smooth rock next to his associate and they began to chat.

Heero picked up a long twig and meandered away from the group, per usual. Relena witnessed his break for solitary freedom and shadowed him. The blue-eyed boy heard the crunching footfalls of someone coming up behind him and his sixth sense discerned it was the only person he considered a friend. Catching up, Relena walked side by side with Heero in silence for a few minutes.

Speaking up, Relena said in a low voice, "Sorry about the game yesterday."

"It's alright, it was just a game," Heero replied, kicking a rock.

"I know, but you seemed really upset when we lost."

"Maybe a little. I just didn't want Muller to win," the dark-haired boy answered with a half-smile.

They continued to walk and talk for a while, aimlessly treading over a hillside, strolling between large trees, laughing at childish jokes they shared. While Heero leaned against a large oak tree, smiling so honestly and brilliantly, eyes not so dead; Relena gave into her own desires. Lifting herself up onto her tip-toes, she impulsively kissed her crush on the mouth.

Jolted, his eyes opened wide and before he could stop himself, Heero pressed both hands to her shoulders and shoved her back with all his startled force. Falling on the ground, the small of her back landed on the hard jagged form of a half buried rock. A shrill cry fell from her lips.

Struck with the sudden frightening shock of regret, Heero stood frozen there as his heart pounded in its cracked state. He was at a momentary loss of how to amend the wrong he'd committed. The 'flight' mode told him to run, run hard and fast, to not face his mistake. But he couldn't do that to her. It would be as if he was turning his back on Marino, which was utterly unacceptable in his mind. Suppressing the want to dash off, Heero stood stock-still, wide-eyed, and unmoving.

Rolling onto her right side, it took a moment for the pain to bring her to tears. It goes without saying that this wasn't relatively close to the reaction she'd been excepting and hoping for. Crying in agony, Relena stammered, "Wa-why'd yo-you **push** me?!"

Compelled into action, Heero stammered as he trembled, "I-I di-din't me-mean to!" And he pulled Relena up to her feet by her forearms. She groaned torturedly, left hand rubbing her sore, bruised back, tears drying on her pale rounded cheeks while her sky-blue orbs resembled that of a kicked puppy expression.

Water building upon her bottom lids, droplets rolling over smooth bottom folds to once again flow down her soft, tender cheekbones, Relena asked with her under lip quavering like a Fall leaf holding hopelessly to its branch in harsh breeze, "Don't you like me?"

"Yes, of course!" Heero affirmed.

"Then why don't you wanna kiss me?" she sniffled, rubbing the back of her hand under her nostrils to swipe away the nasal drainage that threatened to run down the ridges and folds of her philtrum. (A.N. philtrum: the little triangle space below your nose that extends to the tips of the upper lip.)

Understanding slammed into him like a runaway freight train. She _liked_ him. More than a friend. Something he could never return. Letting someone down easy was a mind-fuck of a new idea. He'd never had to push someone away that he cared for and set specific boundaries. It was always went one of two ways. Number one, he didn't want their attention or affection or sexual desire at all, and was forced into situations a child should never experience at the hands of parent. Number two, he was the one who sought out and initiated the inappropriate contact. How was he to mitigate this kind of circumstance? The one singular thing he desired most was about to be turned down because it came from the wrong person. Now, wasn't that always the tricky thing about Love?

Shaking his tousled head, Heero admitted, "I can't kiss you." A long stretch of silence occupied the air particles between them as the blue-eyed boy strived unsuccessfully to clarify himself. "I don't like you like that," he whispered.

Relena whimpered, "Why not?"

Choking on his own words, the Japanese boy forced the painful exclamation out minus pause, and with fists clenched in white knuckled tension at his sides, "Because you remind me of my sister!"

Profound shock and astonishment wrapped the Peacecraft girl up in an unescapable blanket. So vainly focused on the desire of her crush returning the loving instinct, she'd never fathomed the boy to deny her on grounds of an incestuous reason. The idea made her scared, nauseous, and depressed. Her first lesson in rejection, and it wasn't easy to swallow.

Staring eye to eye, they both attempted to find the words that needed to be said, but neither could discover a healthy way out of the situation. Relena wanted to scream, cry, holler that he was sick and twisted for comparing her to his sister, but she couldn't. Heero wanted to know how she could have misconstrued his affection? But an answer wouldn't have alleviated anything, only would make matters worse.

Their saving grace was a high-pitched whistle that sounded far and echoed between the long-stemmed trees, bouncing the sound off the hillsides, making it difficult to decipher where it came from. But they weren't disoriented, they knew exactly where they were. Simply misguided in the domain of emotion, surfing on differing wave lengths in the confusing "thing" called life. Too young, too impressionable, too confused to make sense of the bigger picture.

With questions left unanswered and feelings bruised by fierce blows, the two teens began the somber, silent walk back to their group.

Halfway back, Heero grasped Relena's wrist, squeezed his digits tightly around the bones between her hand and arm, and forced her to meet his gaze. "I like you," he admitted. "It's just not the way you like me." He sighed heavily through his mouth before continuing, "Please tell me we can still be friends. You're the only friend I have here. You're the ony friend I've ever had."

Watery eyes, pouty lips, and blushing cheeks, Relena asked, "How do I remind you of your sister? Didn't you tell me she's dead?" She kept her eyes glued to spot on the ground, the tip of her left tennis shoed toe nudging at the dirt repetitively.

Shrugging, Heero confessed, "Yeah, she's dead, but that doesn't matter. I think I only like other boys anyways." What he really meant was _men._ He didn't care at all for other males his age, but he didn't want to explain that.

The lingering traces of tears vanished from her eyes as she stared shell-shocked at him. "But you're a boy!"

"Yeah, so?"

"You're not suppose to like other boys! It's a sin...I think." Scratching her arm, the blonde girl tried to remember what little had been explained to her about homosexuality from the Bible. It was a topic that wasn't frequently reiterated on in her church.

"Maybe it is," he speculated with a passive shrug.

"You'll go to hell! Aren't you scared?" she practically yelled, arms held out wide in a disbelieving gesture.

"No."

"How can you not be scared of hell? It's a place where evil people live! You're not bad!"

_/I'm not good either./_ The tousled haired youth thought to himself. "Look can we just drop it? Are you still my friend or not?"

Relena glanced around nervously before nodding her head in an unconvincing manner. Resuming their walk, the two friends made their way back to the rest of the group to continue the hike.

The hike commenced, teens following their leaders up and down hills, traipsing narrow paths between dry brush that scratch and scrape their calves similar to nettle thorns, leaving behind red swollen lines of irritated flesh. Relena rarely looked back at the boy she'd fallen for. His confession of homosexuality hurt her heart and made her sad and unbearably uneasy, nauseous; skin crawling with goosebumps. She spent the remaining majority of the hike with Dorothy and Sylvia, which made Heero feel more isolated. Usually that was an appreciated feeling, but with Duo on the outs combined with Relena's obvious disgust with him, Heero felt more alone than ever.

Later that night, shortly after dinner, the stargazing activity began. All the teens were required to wear life vests, climb into the canoes, and paddle the skinny boats out onto the center of the lake to identify as many constellations that they had learned from the previous nights projector slide show. Heero waited in the back of the group after prompting Relena to take the second seat away from Duo, leaving the one in front of him vacant. She questioned his motives, wondering if his perverse sexuality was the reason he wanted to be close to the funny, attractive braided man. Most all the girl were crushing on him, his sunny disposition and easy-going attitude making him the ideal candidate for the girls to fawn over. She shoved the idea from her head and assumed he looked up to Duo like some of the other boys did.

The Peacecraft girl took the seat her friend requested, and it wasn't until Heero boarded the canoe before him that Duo realized he should have assigned the seats. Duo climbed into the canoe, sat at the only open seat at the back of the little boat and instructed the kids to row.

Once they reached the center of the lake, the other boat-full of kids drifting in the water not from them, the violet-eyed man asked his group to start pointing out constellations, recite their origins, and their significance starting with the North Star. The girls took over the answering portion, only allowing two of the boys who actually remembered anything from last night to answer along with them. Heero was one of the few to remain silent. Though his mouth didn't move, his hands spoke volumes.

Every so often, Duo found himself swatting away Heero's wandering hands from his lower legs and knees, going as far to lightly kick them away occasionally. Just because he was a little stoney - he had shared a doobie with Wufei after dinner - didn't mean he was inebriated enough to consent to the not so subtle touching and the deeper meaning behind them.

The braided man was adamant, uncompromising in his decision to distance himself from the damning blue-eyed teen.

Close to an hour later all the canoes paddle back to the dock. Everyone climbed out as the braided man remained seated in his spot and so did - unsurprisingly - Heero. Without making eye contact, keeping his vision peering out over the lake and the tall trees along its distant dark shore, Heero repeated his question from the night before: "Why are you avoiding me?"

Most of the people had cleared the wooden walkway except for a lingering few who were too enwrapped in idle conversation. Duo found it safe to lean forward, breath hotly over the shell of Heero's ear as he whispered, "Because I want nothing to do with you. I don't like you. You're a demented, fucked up lil kid who won't stay the hell away from me. All your seducing bull shit isn't going to work. If you want somebody to fuck you, use you as their play-thing, find someone else because it ain't gonna be me."

He knew the words to be harsh, brutal, overall mean and were meant to cut deep.

Heero had quivered softly under the heat of the braided man's exhale before his damning words stabbed into the place where his supposed heart was meant to be. Angry, rejected, utterly humiliated in a not so private setting, Heero stood and exited the canoe, consciously jostling the boat harshly to make Duo hold on tight to the sides rather than fall in the frigid waters.

Violet eyes followed the kids' movements until he quickly vanished at end of the pier, marching to fade into complete darkness. He was only half apologetic for his vicious words. Duo recognized that if he didn't put a callous distance between them, Heero would only continue to push his buttons and boundaries. His best bet was to feign absolute disdain, and over all resistance if he wanted to hold onto any hope of surviving the summer to become the lofty, mildly well-adjusted individual he'd been at the start.

While Heero stomped down the dock and found Relena waiting for him at the end, he decided to ignore her and continue his rapid pace to his cabin. But the girl was not so easily dissuaded.

"What was that?" she asked in a harsh whisper.

"What was what?" he retorted grumpily.

"What happened between you and Duo?"

"Nothing."

She followed slightly behind him until they reached the old wooden steps to Cabin Weayaya. He then turned to look at her with a painfully blank stare and she fought to ask her next question: "Do you like him?"

"He doesn't like me so what does it matter?" he griped and placed his right foot on the first step up to his sleeping quarters.

The blonde girl was quick to jump onto the shallow staircase and block his escape. He was not amused by her tactics, on the contrary, he found himself moving from chagrined to down right furious. All he fucking wanted was to climb onto his bunk, huddle under the covers and wallow in his own self-pity, and begin to plot a new course of action starting at square one.

On the steps, staring down into the dark blue eyes that typically looked down on her, Relena repeated her question with more force, "Do you like him?"

Heero quickly grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her away from the cabin. A short distance away, he pushed her into a tree and seethed, "Don't say that so loud! Do you know what the other guys will do to me if they know I'm a fag?!"

"Don't call yourself that!" she pleaded, so desperately wanting it to be untrue.

The blue-eyed boy ran his hands through his unkempt hair and tried vainly to calm himself with even meditative breaths. "You can't ask those kinds of questions when other people might be listening," he advised, but it sounded more like a command.

"Just answer my question," she pleaded, clutching both his arms above the elbow and piercing his eyes with a desperate, half watery gaze.

His shoulders shrugged, falling to slack his overall posture. Returning her glance eye to eye he confirmed her worst possible fears: "Yeah I like him, but like I said he doesn't like me."

More of her young heart broke; the crack that begun to form earlier tore further down, opening up and bleeding profusely in her chest. She couldn't think of a thing to say to that, and had been hoping he would pacify her fears. As she stood there, shocked and unable to speak words, Heero settled for walking away. The sincere admission undoubtedly caused more bad than good for the friendship between him and the blonde girl.

Duo, well confined in the privacy of his bathroom, looked down at the Polaroid photo of the blue-eyed siren that he'd been gifted a while ago. He was struggling with understanding why the negative feelings continued to grow for the awful words he'd said to the kid, and came to the awareness that he was not going to grasp any kind of understanding anytime soon. Licking the back of the photograph, he stuck it to the wall opposite from where he sat on the closed toilet seat and began to divide the last remanents of his white drug into three thin - thinner than he would have liked - lines. Yeah, that micro-manage crap hadn't worked. Two days and he was out of the stuff. He was contemplating using the only phone to call his dealer and schedule a time at night to pick up, but that was a tricky since the only landline was located in Howard's office. The seemingly innocent white dust created an exceptional hunger that he fed, subsequently reinforced each chance he got, and he couldn't wait to get more.

After each inhale his violet orbs sought out the photo that stuck precariously to the wall by his saliva.

Two more unbearable, torturous, mundane days passed with no change in the circumstances between him in camp consoler. The set back made the dark-haired boy go to extreme measures to regain the attention he had had while he was ill. Heero spent a lot of time closer and nearer to Milliardo Peacecraft, consciously displaying lax suggestive body language whenever Duo's violet eyes seemed to notice. Relena took this sudden change as a mindful attempt to dissuade himself from his perversion because there was no one more honorable, forthright, and godly than her big brother.

Once Duo approached him to warn, "Stay away from that Milliardo character."

"Why?" Heero asked petulantly with his arms folded over his chest and eyebrow arching defiantly.

The little smirk playing on Heero's soft lips irritated him. "Because the dude is bad news."

"Whatever," he responded flippantly.

Walking away from the braided man, the smirk blossomed into a grin. _/It's working./_ He thought to himself. If all went according to plan, he'd have Duo back where he wanted him, right under his thumb.

Unbeknownst to Heero, Milliardo played well into his game like a pro, only touching him in subtle, soft, innocent ways that allowed him to believe the man had not an inkling of what his real motives were. The blond man also did this to come off as an upstanding role model for his younger sister. He knew she was infatuated with the boy, could tell by her body language which subliminally betrayed her innocent pubescent attraction. Milliardo cared not for disgracing the object of her affection while plotting the painful demise the boy would surely face. He'd become quite skilled at it over the years. A complete lack of moral compass gave him the credence to do as his wished, hide his true nature with the skills of a chameleon, and lack any and all source of regret and remorse.

Milliardo knew what he was. Knew what he had to pretend to be. And lived up to both with frightening accuracy and deception.

On the eve of the fourteenth night of camp, the Peacecraft man request the boy to meet him behind Duo's cabin well past curfew. The location was essential; a place where Heero thought a bit of revenge and provoking would take place. All the blond man needed was a little more leverage, a bit more ill placed trust, and add a tad more confidence within the ignorant boy who thought he was so damn smarter than everyone else. Such a dumb, young, self-assured beauty to be caught in his web of misfortune. A prey almost too easy to enjoy, but the sultry exotic youth knew the dark side of human nature, experienced it many times; Milliardo believed he could surely handle more torment, maybe. Or break underneath the weight of it all.

Either way, it didn't matter to the blond man as long as he got what he wanted in the end.

Over the two days Duo had to deal with no longer having that delicious white powder in his grasp. It left him wanting more, but nowhere near as addicted that he was strung out, or going through withdrawals. No. That would come much later, and he would find a fresh avenue for purchase sooner than he thought, and it wouldn't involve him leaving Camp Bleska in the middle of the night, much to his future relief. Though he did entertain the idea of running away for a few hours just to purchase that narcotic from his dealer, Tony, but could never bring himself to do so. He still had plenty of weed and a few friends with bottles of strong liquor. Wufei was actually a bigger stoner than he was. The Chinese man hid it well, and kept a fairly level head whilst high as a kite. It amused Duo greatly to know that stiff, almost grumpy looking Chinese man was faking his attitude in order to keep his drug use private. Waiting for coke could have proved good in the long run, letting him reach the ultimate recognition that it wasn't something he ought to be messing with. But that wouldn't come, and the desire to have more, more, more, more would eventually become obsessive, overwhelming, and absorbing. The new sudden addiction didn't trigger thoughts of 'I shouldn't do this', because he'd done so many other drugs along those lines and came out victorious despite his addictive nature.

Reflecting fondly on his childhood, the braided man remember the first toke he inhaled off the butt of a filter-less cigarette with his long missed friend Solo. His spunky friend had swiped a half smoked Lucky Strike from his mother's astray; it had only been lit for two minutes before being snuffed out. The re-lit nicotine tasted awful to both boys, but they sucked it down, too inexperienced to know how to inhale properly. Solo made it habit to steal his mother's smokes and over time they learned how to smoke - though Duo couldn't remember who taught who by this point - by inhaling with a deep breath, taking the toxins straight into their lungs, which created a fun tingling sensation in their heads. Even now cigarettes gave him that familiar buzz since he didn't smoke them too often, sending him right down a bittersweet memory lane.

Solo had been one of the last few persons to really get under his layers and dissect him. Since then he didn't bet on "best friends" staying around too long, especially when his obscene sexuality became public notice. And God forbid a brief lover - more like a body to temporarily screw - tried to get close enough to unravel his pain, torment, and sadness to reach his dilapidated heart.

Some would say he grew into a well-adjusted adult in the face of all his stife...but that was before Heero was dumped abruptly into his life. Occasionally he had thoughts of taking advantage of those more weak or younger than him, but he fought those urges off with the help of his faith and by simply having a standard moral compass that told him not to repeat the pain dealt to him. With another defaced soul around that moral compass twisted, turned, elongated into something unrecognizable similar to a clock from Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory".

He'd come so far only to fall to inescapable depths.

Milliardo convinced the dark blue-eyed boy to meet him outside Duo's cabin that night. There was no specific reason given, but Heero thought whatever happened it was would catch Duo's attention somehow since their meeting was to start behind his cottage.

The moon shone brightly, creating organic white-blue shapes between branches which guided his way to the back side of his counselors' cabin. He trod light paces, walking slowly and calmly until he reached the destination only to be grasped and pulled into a darker shadow.

He gasped.

Heart beat racing, the organ thudding inside his ribcage audible in his eardrums, the blue-eyed boy was eaten up by fear until a soothing familiar voice ease his discomfort.

"You made it. I'm so glad," Milliardo whispered hotly in his ear, purposefully teasing the back of the shell and wrapping him in tight, warm embrace that was suppose to signify trust, control, openness, and want. The blond man pulled out all his tricks, a true Master in the dishonorable Art of Deception. His skills allowed him to ebb and flow between being the kind, well-bred and knowledgable person he was suppose to be and the snake in the grass that he was. A true chameleon. A ferocious predator. A wolf in sheep's clothing. Yes, the blond man had given Heero a taste of what he truly was outside the mess hall on the day of the food fight, and then he had succeed in contorting the boys perception of him, fabricating a less threatening image.

Milliardo understood what he is.

Milliardo knew how to hide himself.

Milliardo held a uncanny talent for luring prey his; making them come _willing_ to him.

The tension within Heero eased, his body relaxing against the blond mans' chest as the he continued to assault his ear and neck with his mouth. It wasn't as exciting as having Duo touch him but it felt good anyways. In the back of his mind, the blue-eyed boy wondered how this was suppose going to benefit his pursuit of the braided man, but that question was quickly snuffed out when Milliardo shoved his hand under the waistband of his shorts and underwear in one swift motion. Long fingers wrapped around his semi-stiff sex, stroked him with a brutal fast pace.

The blond man had no intentions of drawing this encounter out, he wanted it over as quickly as possible since it was simply a tactile manuever to get Heero to where he really wanted him.

Heero moaned loudly as he was pulled closer to climax.

"Shh," the Peacecraft man hushed, raised his free hand to draw the pads of his fingertips down the slope of the boys slender tan neck. It took great reserves to stop himself from gripping and strangling the kid into silence. Heero complied by biting his lip between his teeth with gentle force. Resting his head back on the blond man's shoulder, peering up at the sky as Milliardo pushed his shorts down his thighs just in time for him to spew his load on the ground, Heero stifled the groan of release.

It was quick, too fast and almost unsatisfactory. Heero offered to do something for him, he thought Duo was suppose to catch them in the act, but Milliardo rejected his volunteered services with kind, gentle, placating words.

The baffled blue-eyed boy began to walk away when Milliardo asked, "Meet me here tomorrow night?"

He was quiet for a moment, wondering what the point was since tonight didn't lead him in the direction he wished.

"I'll make it worth your while," Milliardo added upon a whisper.

"Okay," Heero responded, and continued to walk back to his cabin.

Along the way, he tried to decipher Milliardo's objective. Failing miserably to piece together the puzzling first encounter with their most recent. He lacked the intimidation from before, only displaying the desire to mess around while Duo was otherwise not in the picture. Whilst pushing open the door to his cabin, Heero came to misguided, false answer that he'd been wrong to fear Milliardo in the first place.

So damn wrong indeed.

Day fifteen proceed much like the last three.

When he regrouped with the blond man after bedtime, he beckoned him to follow his steps towards the mess hall.

The tall blond man offered the blue-eyed boy what he wanted, a chance to infuriate and ignite Duo's sense of domain over him, that is, if there was one to exploit. Milliardo dangled this over his head like the forbidden fruit that Eve desired in the garden and later took a bite of (2).

When he asked, Milliardo told the tale of a fabled scheme.

The plan was uncomplicated enough. Milliardo claimed he orchestrated a meeting with Duo that was to take place after curfew in the cafeteria. He was supposed to come under the ruse that they were going to smoke a few bowls and share a couple of beers; a friendly get together. What would really happen - according to Milliardo's plan - was that the braided man would stumble upon Heero and him in some sort of sexual activity, which would hopefully make Duo jealous and possessive over him. Again, Heero wondered why Milliardo was kind enough to help him, and hoped the desired response from Duo would become reality.

And so the demented boy followed the adult of whom he thoroughly believed he had control over, just like he had sway over most of the other mature people in his life, but the young Japanese boy had no idea what he was getting himself into, had not a glimmer of what kind of sadism was personified in the person named Milliardo Peacecraft – even the name so utterly deceptive, illusory, an absolute farce.

The light blue-eyed man led him to the back of the cafeteria, opened a back door that led to the kitchen. Heero entered into the complete darkness, confident and fear free. Hands on his shoulders guided him through the blindness a short distance. It made him wonder how the man behind him could see in the darkness; maybe he was capable of nocturnal vision similar to that of a cats'. When they stopped, Heero felt Milliardo reach around him and heard another door open, _scrapping_ along the floor. Cold air blasted over his body, a harsh winter unleashed to suck the warmth from his tight flesh. Still lost in a light less atmosphere, the boy felt the man behind shove him forward gently by the shoulders, and then heard the _hush_ of the heavy door closing behind the both of them. The chill deepened, festering into his bones and making him wrap his arms around himself to fight off the frost.

_/Where the fuck are we?/_ Heero questioned mentally. They'd stepped from the warm summer air into a freezing dimension.

Knowing where they were and what he was doing, the blond man reached over to the right and twisted the plastic dial for the lights. Located where it was, the lights were set to a timer rather than a switch, for when workers forgot to turn them off.

Harsh blue lights flickered to life causing Heero to squint his eyes, cringe, and cover his face while his large pupils constricted to a smaller diameter in order to adjust to the luminance. Removing his wrist from his vision, the supple teen found himself standing in a terrifying room. The four walls contained an eerie dark blue-green hue created by the few light bulbs and the hard concrete walls. On one side of the small, tight room were stacks of boxes labeled with names of food products. Along the other, large dissected rib cages of severed meat, skin stripped from the limbs hung from the ceiling by chains on intimidating large hooks beside two pig corpses. Carcasses, bright red with white fatty tissue dangled unmoving in the stiff frosty air. It lacked the stench of rooting flesh due to its low temperature, but the distinctive scent of death lingered softly in the closed off quarters. The blue-eyed boys' breath became more shallow, shaky, and visible in the freezing room; it coming forth like a thick white cloud from between his parted lips.

"What are we doing here?" Heero asked, vainly trying to put up a brave front and floundered horribly.

Milliardo smirked at the waver and pitch of his voice. "You know," he started in a soothing cadence, "You shouldn't wander off with people you don't know. It's not a wise choice."

Feeling as if he were being weighed down by a sinking ship, it dawned on the Prussian blue-eyed boy that he was in far over his head, to the point of drowning, in the company of devil far worse than any he'd encountered before. There was no ploy to get Duo here; the scheme was to get him isolated and vulnerable.

Swallowing the large lump in his throat, the tan lithe boy turned slowly on his heel, tried to bypass Milliardo for the door while softly mumbling "I wanna go back to my cabin now."

Chuckling darkly, the tall blond twisted the teen back around forcibly by the shoulders and pushed him further into the room between the hanging meat of cow and pig.

"You're not going anywhere."

Heero began to twist, turn, and struggle in Milliardo's grasp, rocketing his elbows back to dig the pointy joints into the blond man's ribcage, his heels kicking up to boot Milliardo's shins, and Heero yanked on his long, loose hair all in hopes of breaking free. Blood pulsed loudly in his eardrums and the fight or flight instinct kicked in strongly, bringing him to his current struggle for deliverance.

Milliardo laughed mentally at the boys' strife while finding his blows and kicks hardly all that painful and grinning ear to ear; knowing that he wasn't going to get away without a real brawl. Punching the teen in his throat, the Peacecraft man was successful in stunning his victim, making him fall to the floor, hands wrapped around his neck as he struggled to breathe. Heero laid on the floor like a crumpled mess at the mans' feet.

Looming over his fallen prey, Milliardo consoled, "If you continue to fight me, things will only get worse for you."

Regaining his ability to suck air into his lungs, Heero nodded dumbly, eyes fixed on the blue-grey concrete floor. The process of reverting back to his mental safety place had already begun. It's what always happened - unwilling, or unconsciously - when he heard the heavy footfalls of his fathers steps approach his bedroom door through the narrow hall in their shanty home. Receding back into his mind was the blue-eyed boys' only defense mechanism, a mental tool to help protect himself from the agony. So he fell back into that frame of mind, too scared to fight and subconsciously knowing that he couldn't escape even if he gave it his all.

Unfortunately for him, this would be a far cry from what he endured at the hands of his father. Heero had tried to fight him off the first few times when it started but was too small to win. Odin used him as a source of release, didn't care about their blood connection, and didn't inflict unneccessary pain unless his son refused to comply. This wasn't the case with the Peacecraft man. Nope, he fiendishly desired to see and hear the suffering.

Milliardo made quick work of stripping the kid of his shirt and binding prickly rope around his wrists, chaffing his sensitive skin. The adult forced the boy to his feet, maneuvered him to stand between the severed ribs of a cow and a gutted, upside down swine carcass. Lifting the numb, vacant eyed teen up off the floor by his upper arms, the blond man placed his bound joints on an unoccupied hook, leaving Heero to dangle like another chunk of meat in the ever cooling freezer.

With the tips of his sneakered toes _scuffing_ quietly on the concrete slab beneath him, Heero tried to remain unnerved. The strain of being suspended put great tolls on his shoulders, an unfamiliar pain, and it pulled the dark-haired teen from his safe place minutely. He numbly registered that if he could keep the tips of his toes planted on one spot, without moving even though his body trembled against all his weight being placed on his wrists, the pain became less significant and allowed him to remain mentally distant from the current situation.

And there he was, displayed helplessly for an audience of one to visually drink in. Stretched from head to toe, his body buckling under the toil, Heero kept his blue eyes glued to _that_ spot on the wall directly across from him above the crates of frozen foods. The more he tried to remain still, the more he was able to fade back into that part of his mind that allowed him to remain unfeeling. Gazing blankly at the wall, the blue-eyed boy barely noticed the fog his breath created or the dark twinkle in his perpetrators' light blue eyes.

Milliardo stood a few feet away, admiring tan skin, tight muscles that were forced to protrude by his position. Pulling a pack of Camel's from his pocket, the blond man withdrew one cigarette, brought it to his lips and lit it with a shiny, metal Zippo lighter. Enjoying the first inhale, he began to pace slowly around Heero's suspended form, releasing the tobacco smoke from his between his lips and circling a second time. Stopping behind his target, the Peacecraft man pulled the filter from between his lips, smirked at the fiery end and the stressed muscles between the boys' bulging shoulder blades. Turning the nicotine stick between his fingers, Milliardo brought it down and stubbed it hard between two notches of the boys spine.

Numbed, Heero was harshly pulled from his safe place to reality with painful fervor. Screaming, his legs kicked out from under him, curling at the knee, increasing the overtaxed muscles in his upper body to an unbareable pull. Uncontrollable cries for mercy tickled his fancy, and Milliardo laughed a delighted giggle at his victims plea's all the while twisting the cylindrical cigarette between his fingers, pressing it further into exotic flesh. The fragrance of charred flesh filled his nostrils and the burn blackened around the edges of the cigarette, creating a circle that would eventually scar in the same shape. He wanted to see blood but that could wait. (A.N.: Second and third degree burns don't typically poor blood at first, sometimes later, if at all.)

Breathing jaggedly, each inhale and exhale rattling his chest cavity, Heero tried to solidify his position, quiet his screams by sinking his teeth into his bottom lip, subsequently producing the metallic, copper ting of blood to flow over his taste buds.

It was excruciating.

One of the most painful experiences he'd ever suffered, and even though the burning tool had been removed from his skin, the pain still dawdled and radiated along his backbone. Heero's arms began to rattle against the rope, shaking the hook he hung from, as he rested his chin submissively against his sternum. Each stifled, aching breath inward caused his chest to expand and pull at the charred muscles. Each exhale was a God send, but the dark-haired boy couldn't stop himself from the need to breathe in again. Tears flooded his orbs, but the kid was nowhere near ready to let Milliardo know just how much pain he'd caused, so he summoned all his strength to halt the tears that threatened to pour.

"I'm curious," the blond man started, stalking slowly around the quavering teen, dropping the snuffed cigarette and pulling another one from his pack. "What is it about Mr. Maxwell that makes you go to such extremes?" he asked, stopping in front of Heero to gaze at his sparsely perspiring face, placed the cigarette between his lips and ignited the end of it with his lighter.

The _sssip_ echoed in Heero's ears and made him flinch, much to the Peacecraft mans amusement.

Clamping his teeth around the soft, fleshy protrusion of his lower lip, the dark-haired boy said nothing. The burning sensation between his shoulders had created an overpowering amount of pain, but he wasn't ready to break yet.

"Hmm?" the blond man hummed from behind the boy. Heero arched his back away from Milliardo as the man circled him again. The Peacecraft man smiled open-mouthed, baring teeth, feeling absolutely titillated by boys physical, unconscious response. The more he bent, forced his body to shy away, the more his knees quaked under the burdensome weight of his body. "If you don't talk, I'll make you," the blond man whispered, leaning into the kids face to murmur in his ear, nicotine breath washing over his face. As he reached around him to stub the second cigarette half an inch below the first along the spine, he felt a great amount of joy radiate like white light through his body at Heero's struggling torment. The painful hollering of extreme suffering sent a warm tingling sensation down his back, over his shoulders that also flow down the backs of his legs. This. This is what he wanted. The blue-eyed creatures cries of pain and a climatic release that would surely follow, which would be for his own benefit and not the others.

" _Noo_!" turned from a yell to an anguished, incoherent sob. Pulling both feet from the ground, Heero kicked frantically to and fro, sending his free limbs flying through the frost-bitten air and connecting with his tormentors ribcage in the process. Milliardo stumbled backwards, arms wrapped around his bruised flank.

But he wasn't done.

"Fuck you!" he hollered at the top of his lungs, the profanity coming out extremely strangled as if he had gravel lodged in his esophagus. "Someone's going to hear me! And you're going to spend the rest of your life in jail!" he cried, hot tears of anguish flowing down his cheeks. "My dad is a sheriff and he'll make you suffer!" the dark-haired teen pledged.

The Peacecraft man, hunched over at the waist and clutching his abused right side fell into a fit of hysterics. Once his laughter ceased, he unwrapped his arms from his torso and stood at his full height. The man asserted confidently, "You have nothing on me. Your _daddy_ might be a police officer, but my father is a State Senate and I come from a strong, powerful family. I've been sanctioned as his prodigal son to follow in his footsteps, and I've got the background and support of the community to defend my honor. So tell me again, what is it that you _think_ you have on me that could damn me to prison?" (A.N.: keep in mind that this time frame is the 60's, long before DNA testing and the police work that we know of today.)

"Scream all you like," he added. "No one can hear you."

And no one would or could hear them. It was the heart of the reason and of the plan for Milliardo. With the cafeteria located further back into the forest and away from all the other cabin's, it was the utmost superb location. The added inches of concrete that structured the room was another added bonus. The kitchen staff really should have been more considerate when locking up for the night.

Milliardo clutched Heero's chin with a nail-biting grasp and demanded, "Tell me why that braided low-life is so damn important to you." The blond man lacked all understanding of affection - though Heero at this time didn't register his desires towards Duo as deep seeded affection or anything close to _love_ \- and itched to know why the abused kid sought him out over everyone else. Always inquisitive, ever wanting to understand those not like him - the rest of the human race - Milliardo found Heero's fascination with the street rat rather perplexing. All he wanted was some insight to the obviously abused teens train of thought. Oh yeah, and his absolute suffering caused by his own hands. But really, that was the main reason for luring him here. It was a game.

_Slucking_ the fluid in his mouth from the tip of his tongue to the back of his throat, Heero flung a fat wad of clear spittle into the Peacecraft mans' face, landing on the bridge of the adults nose and covering a good portion of both of his eyelids.

Cackling uproariously, stepping backwards and bending at the waist, hands on his knees, the blond man was consumed by the hilarity of the situation. The humor was only privy to him.

Wiping away the oral residue from his face, the man in control snickered whilst glaring - and the words that followed chilled Heero to the core of his soul : "You really don't grasp the position that you're in, do you?" His laughter continued as he reached out to grab the left side of Heero's flank and spin forcefully on his axis. The hook he was precariously displayed on twisted the metal eye-lit that was embedded in the ceiling, allowing him to spin a full three hundred and sixty degrees and not just halfway around to be bounced back. Footing lost, he spun like a helpless kid on a tiring swing that was being pushed by bully. He even dug one foot into the floor to slow and eventually stop the spin.

Pulling his third cigarette free from his mouth, the end a bright orange, Milliardo continued his psychologically damaging torture.

Heero spun on the hook, the gritty fibers of the rope digging into tender skin, and the hook _clinking_ and _clanging_ against the hoop it was secured from which twisted in its drill hole in the ceiling. The blond man watched as hot breaths of air built short-lived clouds, and felt his cock twitch in his shorts between his legs. Latching his hands onto Heero's waist, digging the his nails to puncher through the mesh fabric and scrap the skin below; Milliardo yanked Heero's waist to his, ground into him with rolling friction that forced the boys' body to betray him and respond in a normal half aroused state.

"You are at my mercy until I set you free," the adult breathed heavily into the thirteen year olds' ear, reaffirming his state of vulnerability.

With his body acting disloyally to his mind's desire, Heero wept silently. Tears gathering on the point of his chin to fall through the chilled air, and leave a wet, dark splatter marks on the concrete floor between their legs. Repressed mewls and whines came forth from his tight throat, making his suffering all the more obvious to the man who desired the begrudging, involuntary reaction.

Fear consumed his heart. Made him react truthfully. All he wanted was Duo, and apparently that wish had brought him to this living nightmare.

"You've yet to answer my question," Milliardo pointed out, holding his third cigarette between the pinching bridge of his thumb and index finger, rolled it as an intimidating utensil - an implement of excitement for him.

Heero's already taut body became more rigid in his strained, suspended place. Every muscle was increasingly worn by each passing second.

"Which question?" the wide-eyed boy asked, shaking in his binds similar to that of tectonic plates pushing and pulling together: an earthquake.

Feeling slightly irate, Milliardo stepped back, his hand held firmly to the boys hips, and he spun him harshly on his metallic hook again. It was punishment for not paying close attention. He didn't like repeating himself. At least the added discipline brought more groans of pain that allowed him to chortle at the kids distress.

The spin forced his feet from their permanent spot, again, made him swing wide with his slender legs twirling wildly, flying through the harshly cold air seeking to grip onto something, anything to alleviate the pain in shoulders. His raised calves made contact with the sticky, slimy scum of dead flesh, their meeting generated a sickening _slap_ , and it left slick, nasty residue on his skin. Milliardo jumped back, out of the path of kicking feet, and pushed Heero's semi-immoble form back into the dangling dead meat beside him, which added more of that gross excess slim to cover his abdomen.

Milliardo grasped him by chest, stopped him mid-turn, and reached his arm behind Heero's back to submerged the fiery end of his third cigarette into the dark-haired boys skin. The Peacecraft man held him close so he could physically feel the agony, twisting, quaking pain that he administered. Heero was more responsive than he'd dreamed. Of course, who wouldn't be when being repeatedly stabbed with a lit cigarette.

And the tears the blue-eyed boy had been valiantly holding back followed from his eyes to run hotly down the curves of his face like a flooded riverbed, ending at the pinnacle of his chin as cold semi-frozen drops. There was only so much he could take, and though the flow of tears had started a while ago, they gained quick momentum and weight.

Watching Heero's delicate, tortured face twist, warp, and crumple into pure suffering - his eyebrows furrowing together, mouth opening wide to authorize the screams to pitch at a nerve shaking decibel - Milliardo felt his half-smile spread into a grin by the way he facial muscles pulled. His sky-blue eyes widened with extreme excitement, and the craving for more deepened.

Milliardo answered with a dramatic sigh, "The one about Maxwell."

Heero's bottom lip began to tremble more violently, eyes producing tons of water, and his entire body slackened to pull against the rough rope as he murmured, "I just want him to like me."

"And what do you stand to gain from that?" Milliardo asked, utterly disgusted. The blue-eyed boys' answer brought the fowl taste of bile to his mouth, so he sucked another drag off his third smoke to counteract the taste.

Closing his dark, beautiful blue eyes, Heero allowed more fat tears roll down the arches of his face. He had an ultimate goal in mind, but it was far from a solid plan. Milliardo took one intimidating, threatening step towards him, which provoked Heero to stutter, "I-I-I dun-dunno!"

The light blue-eyed man took careful, soft placed steps around the boy; stalking around him for what felt like the hundredth time to Heero. Faced with his back and the two circular burn marks, Milliardo chuckled softly to himself as he ran his hand down the curve of the teens' bumpy vertabra. He intentionally angled the cigarette between his fingers to graze the soft tan skin while his hand descended the ridges, making the mix-raced boy bow and shiver away from his touch. "There has to be a reason," Milliardo mumbled mostly to himself, lost in his own depravity while admiring the goose bumps that formed under the pads of his fingers. Pressing his nose into dark velvety hair, the heartless adult drank in the fear tainted pheromones (3). Placing his mouth on the point of Heero's ear, Milliardo breathed heavily, "What do you hope to achieve by getting him to like you?" And then sank his pearly teeth into the tender lobe, making the exotic boy jerk and whine loudly.

The labors in his Achilles heel emanated up his calves and the backs of his thighs, which reinforced the tremble quaking his body, which quickly drained the reserves of his mental strengths. Heero's limit was breaching rapidly, leaving him with the only available option, which was to answer his captures probing, personal questions. "If I can get him to like me enough, he might take me away," the Prussian blue-eyed boy whimpered sincerely.

"Away?" the blond man echoed. "Away from where? Your home?"

Heero's unruly head nodded subtly in the affirmative.

Snorting abhorrently, Milliardo sneered, "Aww, well isn't that sweet." And he raised the third neglected cigarette that had burnt almost to the filter, and pushed the blazing end below the second burn, keeping them all along the kids' spine in a nice, percise straight line.

Halfway through his most deafening shriek yet, the prickly rope binding his wrists was severed, bringing about Heero's collapse to floor. He landed with a _thud_ , nose bruising into the concrete so hard that blood poured from both nostrils.

Taking a risk, hoping for the best, needing to escape, Heero pushed his limbs along the floor, crawling as fast as he could to the heavy metal door, but his efforts were thwarted. As swift as lightning, Milliardo clutched his left ankle, and dragged him along the cold concrete back to the center of the icy room. The only reason he'd cut the boy free was because Milliardo knew he couldn't leave any marks on his body in places that camp uniform couldn't cover - he could swim with his shirt on like some of the heavyweight kids - and bruises would have surely formed in a few days around the wrists if he kept the boy suspended for the entirety of their encounter.

Towering over Heero's curled, crumpled body, the light behind his head making his whole front frighteningly shadowed, Milliardo extracted a fourth cigarette from the scrunched up pack. Teary blue eyes watched as the flame from the lighter kindled the smoke. Paralyzed, the abused teen continue to watch as Milliardo sucked in large inhale and breathed it out slowly; the wisps of smoke billowing in the air around the mans' dark face and lifeless eyes.

Kneeling down, resting his weight on his haunches over the boy, the Peacecraft man churned over Heero's answer in his mind. It was so naïve, pathetic, and delusional. He was somehow to convince Duo into running away with him, essentially kidnap him and...then what? Flee the state? Did this retarded kid really think that braided freak was going to fall for this? Obviously, the boy was only concerned with the immediate future, neglecting to think about what life would be like years down the road.

"So, you're just a poor lost soul waiting for some knight in shining armor to whisk you off your feet to a better life," he taunted.

Heero didn't dignify his demeaning parallel with any sort of response, only prayed that he would sink into the floor and be swallowed up, encased in the cement.

Milliardo furthered his inquiry: "What happens when you don't succeed? Which you won't, by the way." He paused to give Heero a chance to respond, and he didn't, so he took a drag off his cigarette and added, "This little fantasy you've concocted is absolutely moronic and doomed for failure."

The boys' silence irked him, diminished his patience so he grasped Heero's bloody chin with the same hand that held the cigarette. Seeing the orange-yellow embers come so close to his face made the battered boy gasp, eyes widen in terror. A smile twitched at the ends of Milliardo's lips. Forcing Heero to tilt his head back, the blood from his nose trickled down the back of his throat, coercing him to swallow and cough the vital fluid up. It misted over Milliardo's fingers, and he grinned down at the exotic boy as his thumb swiped over Heero's soft bottom lip, gathering the plasma on his digit and he brought it to his own mouth for tasting.

"When he doesn't take you away, are you just going to run away from home?" the blond man asked, licking the red fluid from his thumb.

Nodding his tousled head, the blood that gathered on the floor smeared against his tan cheek. Hot tears of despondency rained from his ducts like flowing faucet. It was a stupid plan, and he knew that. But even a severely damaged soul like his still held tightly to an ounce of hope, no matter how "delusional" it may be.

Pushing himself up from his crouched position, Milliardo stood over the kid and advised, "You should really stick with plan B."

Sitting on some boxes of frozen food goods, the blond man removed a switch blade from his pocket and popped it open. At the same time he heard a quiet, "I don't want to."

"What?" he questioned, not sure what his prey had whispered.

"I don't want to be alone."

Rolling his sky-blue eyes, he was rather disappointed, piqued, and repulsed with the kid. He wasn't sure what he was expecting from the boy, but the answers he gained were those of a typical, idealistic thirteen year old. Very unbecoming.

Reaching forward, he sunk his fingers into damp sweaty hair and yanked the boy across the floor. Vainly tying to pull away, the blue-eyed boy dug his sneakered toes into the floor and clawed at the cement ineffectually. Forcing Heero to rest his head in his lap, his left cheek pressed firmly against his arousal, Milliardo placed the edge of the knife under Heero's chin. Prussian eyes widened, pleaded silently with another shade of blue for mercy.

The blond man chortled, "Well, aren't you getting cuter by the minute? Stay still."

Twirling the smoke between his fingers, the Peacecraft man brought it down. Twisting away from the fourth burn increased the pressure of the blade against his neck, as did screaming add to the force because his cries made his humble Adam's apple undulate against the carefully, diligently, sharpened blade.

When the torture device was removed from his skin yet again, Heero proceeded to pant heavily and sob against Milliardo's mesh short covered thigh. The tears were warm on his leg in the cold room. After all this time, both were untouched by the chilled air; the blond mans' excitement was too great to be hindered by the frost, and Heero's racing heart, constant state of suffering, and the unceasing production of blood, sweat, and tears sheltered him from the temperature.

Raising his hips, Milliardo effectively ground his crotch on the head he held down between his pale legs. Heero groaned in protest, and the blond stopped only to push his index and middle finger past the his plump lips, spreading the flavor of nicotine in his victim's mouth.

"I hate to break it you, kid-" the blond man started whist simulating what he would do next to the boy with his digits,"- but you were brought into this world alone, you walk through life alone, and you die alone. It'd be astute of you to accept that reality now."

Anger building, resentment for always playing the role of the victim, and having his tormentors' talk down to him like a pettish, simple-minded child, Heero decided to bite down on the two intruders petting his tongue. As if he was reading the kid's mind, Milliardo shoved his fingers down to the last knuckle, causing Heero to gag and cough before pulling his hand free.

Gruffly, Heero begged, "Why are you doing this? What do you want from me?"

"You want this to be over?" Milliardo asking tauntingly, made obvious by his tone of voice and arching eyebrow.

"Yes," Heero hissed, weakly. He wanted this nightmare to end, and hopefully suppress the memory in the long run.

"Then lets finish this."

Getting back to his feet, pushing Heero to rest both hands on the floor alongside his knees, Milliardo shimmied his shorts down low enough to bare his throbbing, veiny manhood. He yanked on dark locks, grabbed the base of his erection, rubbed the head of his cock over blood stained lips, and deadpanned, "You know what you have to do in order to leave, so do it already."

Parting his lips a small fraction, Heero squeezed his eyes shut a moment before the Peacecraft man pulled his head forward with a violent tug and thrusted his hips forward, effectively submerging a good portion of his dry sex into the blue-eyed boys' mouth. It took about a minute for his mouth to yield enough saliva to allow the member in his mouth to plunge in and out smoothly. Milliardo placed his palms over Heero's ears, deafening him slightly, gripped the sides of his head to procure full dominance, authority, and absolute control over their speed.

With his jaw stretched far past comfort, saliva running down his chin and neck to mingle with the dripping blood from his nose, Heero futilely pressed both his hands against the curve of Milliardo's hip bones to slow the imposed pace. The hybrid flavor of his captures flesh and his own blood made Heero's stomach turn. The rounded blunt cock-head poked, prodded, and stuck his gag reflex repeatedly, making him cough around the jabbing intrusion. Knees exerted unforgivingly into concrete, mouth cramping, hair being pulled so hard it brought about a headache, Heero pushed with all his might against Milliardo's humping waist to produce some distance, but no matter how he try the man continued to thrust into his mouth ruthlessly. Just as he was accommodating to the rate, the blond man ran his hands through Heero's chocolate hair from his ears to the back of head and shoved forward, successfully plunging the entire length of his dick into Heero's constricting throat.

He tried to pull away. Tried to breathe. Tried to not to permit the bile that threatened to come up and spew.

The vomit inched its way up from the pit of his stomach to his esophagus, and poured from between his asphyxiating lips like a waterfall. He hadn't eaten much at dinner so the contents were fairly liquid with few chunks of half digest food. Milliardo didn't care in the slightest, wasn't disgusted by the reaction and was actually hoping for it. The retch added more warmth to the overall sensation, and while he held Heero's head down viciously on his cock, he was gifted with the sounds of the kids' muffled groans, punches that hardly fazed his abdomen and grew weaker and weaker. Peering down at the lovely blues that rolled back into the skull, exposed the whites of his eyes as the oxygen that was needed was denied for seconds too long.

Reluctantly pulling his cock free - he would have liked to choke the boy to death on pulsing member - the Peacecraft man gave the dark-haired boy the gift of air. Gasping for breath, the blue-eyed boy heaved more bile, hacked achingly, scraping the tissue of his trachea. Milliardo clenched him by long bangs and brought his face back to where he wanted it. Fumbling helplessly to stop the actions, Heero ducked and dodged his face to the best of his abilities. If he could just get a few more seconds of air, he might divided his pain in half, but he wasn't given the opportunity.

"You wanted this to be over, so do what I want you to," Milliardo growled, angrily. Patience none existent, the physical pain of his prey not reaching his desired level, added with his state of his arousal and how close he'd been to cumming, the blond man refused to wait any longer.

" _No_ ," Heero whimpered between gritted teeth, and did his best to keep Milliardo's cock from reentering his mouth. He proved to be too weak as the one-eyed snake made its insistent way back in with the help of a large, strong hand squeezing his jaw open, bruisingly.

What felt like an eternity, followed by hurling for the second time, Heero felt the throbbing release of Milliardo's seed pulse hotly against the back of his throat, spreading unwelcomed streams of heat and salty flavor.

"Swallow it!" the blond man demanded, purposefully joggling Heero's head. And he tried, he really tried to drink the protein substance, but with the blond mans' slowly softening member blocked him accomplishing the task. Pulling his limping cock out, Milliardo watched as his cum fell from swollen lips to the floor. Tingled by his perverse nature, the Peacecraft man lifted his foot up, placed it on the back of Heero's neck, and forced his down into the pools of semen and vomit. "Lick it up!" he ordered, drunk on power.

Petrified for his life, Heero stuck out his pink tongue, lapped the cement floor to gather the fluid he should have consumed and tasted the mixture of that and his acidic retch. Dry-heaving as he completed to process, Milliardo firmly reprimanded that if he "threw up again, he'd make him lick the entire floor clean," thus making him comply while resisting the urge to hurl all over again.

Whence he was done, the blue-eyed soulless creature laid on the floor as if he were a dead animal along the side of an asphalt road. Too weak to move. Too exhausted to crawl or inch away. Too used up to think much of anything, he laid there. Numb. Dumb. And more dead than he'd been when he arrived at Camp Bleska.

The cold began to seep back into his bones. Shivering there on the floor, memories of the first times Odin had took him, robbed him of his innocence, played on a twisted movie reel in his head. He remembered that he'd fought so hard back then, at least as valiantly as a child could. Those first few times had also left him on the cold floor of his bedroom, quavering in the fetal position.

Satisfied for the time being, Milliardo went through the task of cleaning all evidence out of the large refrigerator with ratty kitchen rags. He paid no attention to the boy curled in on himself by the boxes. A moist rag wiped away all blood, bile, and ash from the floor. He picked up the butts of the cigarettes and tucked them back into the pack they'd come from. He cleaned himself off with an embroidered handkerchief from his pocket, used that same piece of silky cloth to remove the blood and spittle from Heero's unmoving mouth, neck and chest. Though it removed a decent portion of the blood, the underlying stains created from the hemoglobin remained, painting reddish streaks across the lower portion of his face around his mouth and up on his cheeks.

Cleaning task almost complete, Milliardo dressed the boy back in his shirt, uncaring that he'd done so that resulted in the shirt being placed on him inside out; at least it wasn't backwards as well. Placing every displaced item back to its original setting, the blond man meticulously organized the room back to its former structure. He even opened the heavy metal door to allow the nicotine stench to dissipate. The Peacecraft man was perfectly content with taking care of the mess he created, what he didn't want at this point was the company of one lump body lying on the floor like a heap of trash. If he were deceased, he'd been more patient, but he knew better so he walked around the body, kicked the boy harshly in the chest - as if he weren't beaten down enough - and ordered, "Get the fuck out of here before I decide to gut you like that pig."

He didn't even need to finish that statement for Heero heard the first five words and scrambled to his feet, ran past the door, bolted blindly through the kitchen, knocking over pots and pans that _clang_ on the floor as they bounced. He reached a wall. A solid wall. Frantically, on the verge of an all out consuming panic attack, he searched for a door knob, blindly groping the wall in total blackness. It was seconds later, minuets, possibly forever - or at least that's how it felt to him - when his hand finally fumbled around a twistable protrusion that opened up, and freed him from the dark place he'd been lured to.

Night air was not so comforting, it was hot and fucked with his over sensitized body as he sprinted headstrong in the direction of his cabin. Escorted by moonlight, his feet stumbled over rocks, exposed roots, and his own steps along his frenzied journey. He couldn't - wouldn't - allow his stride to slow regardless of his falters over unseen obstacles, and the blazing ache in his legs. He had to run at full speed. He had to push himself to safety even though his body begged him to slow down and breathe evenly. He was too afraid. Milliardo was surely on his tail - or so his mind told him - and he had to run. Run. Run. Run to safety as fast as possible.

Yards from Cabin Weayaya, the tousled haired boy tripped over a fallen branch, skidded into the dirt almost face planting, which would have caused his nose to bleed again. Pushing himself up on weak, wavering arms, Heero looked around frantically, realized he was situated equally between his cabin and his counselors.

If there was ever a time to _need_ someone it was now.

Lifting up to his feet, he scurried to the screen door, pounded on its frame with all his remaining strength in hopes of an answer. The knock echoed and the kid waited impatiently for an answer, resting his forehead against the wiry mesh, wheezing heavily.

A knock echoed in his cabin, stirring the tall, braided man from his sleep. Situating himself on his elbows, he could clearly see which person awoke him through the intricate mesh grate of the screen door. Grumbling incoherent words to himself, he thought, / _Should have pulled the blinds down or closed the main fuckin' door./_ But it had been so humid when he fell asleep that leaving all avenues for air flow to his cabin open seemed necessary at the time. He even kept his hair in its tight braid in order to avoid having his thick mane stick to his perspiring skin. From the silhouette he discerned that it was that conniving, demonic boy whom he wished away each waking moment.

He clutched the handle and pulled it towards his body with every intention of telling the kid to "Go fuck himself", but the evil, heartless, distorting person he was anticipating was far from what he found standing on his old wooden porch.

He gasped out of shock. That confident kid, that manipulating mind, that hypersexual adolescent was replaced with a trembling, crying, huffing form of an excuse of what he was familiar with. Even in the dark he could see the swollen eyes, bruised lips, smears and stains of dried, caked blood around his mouth, quaking bones, and pleading irises. Duo was presented with a breaking person he wasn't capable of handling.

Regardless of his capacity to soothe, Duo wrapped the kid in arms instinctively. Heero shoved him away, the welcomed hands grazed his burn wounds and he fell to his knees, clutching Duo's black night-shirt and begging, pleading, seeking safety with words of haste, "Don't let him get me! Don't let him catch me! Help me! Please!"

Caught completely off guard, Duo snaked his arms under the kids pits, lifted him from the porch and carried him delicately to the bathroom on swift feet. The blue-eyed boy abstained from speaking further, mostly due to his chest heaving uncontrollably.

The boys' hyperventilating resulted in the violet-eyed mans' own panic-stricken state. He'd never seen Heero so out of sorts, so uncontrollable, so neurotic that he couldn't form a proper sentence. Duo's hands roamed over Heero's head, cupping his face, striving to get his attention, repeating the phrase, "Just breath, kid, come on. Just breath."

It wasn't working. Guessing it was self-imposed reaction to an anxiety attack, Duo could think of only one way to stop him. Pulling his right hand back high above his head, the braided man wondered if his action would be the proper course, but the ragged, fast breathing wasn't slowing any.

Suddenly, Heero felt a hard solid force _smack_ against his cheek, he wasn't sure what it was at first the but the following sting proved what it was. A slap. Duo slapped him. One last gulping inhale, and he held for a few seconds before letting slowly out his mouth. The braided man achieved bringing Heero back to reality, but not without repercussions. Those blood-shot Sapphire orbs turned on him, questioning wordlessly, tears hanging precariously to red-rimmed lids and wet bottom lashes.

"I-uh," Duo began unevenly, "I-I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to hurt you." Those delicate, swollen blues closed slowly, heavy drop rolling free. "Pl-please don't cry! I'm sorry! I'm so fucking sorry! I just couldn't let you pass out on me, and I tho- I thought -," the strong-willed boy crumbled before him into a sobbing mess. "I thought wrong!" he declared, pulled the kid into a hug only to be pushed away again.

With Duo shoved back into the opposite wall, Heero threw open the mirrored medicine cabinet, and rifled through the contents, tossing everything that wasn't what he was searching for to floor.

"What are you looking for?" Duo tried to help, but the mess of a boy smacked his hands away, and made a warning sound that sounded like something akin to whining, growling, rabid animal.

Finding the toothpaste, Heero twisted the cap off and squeezed a good amount of the minty stuff into his mouth, practically eating the whole tube. He wanted it gone. All the horrible tastes in his mouth, the copper ting, the residual bile, the flavor of Milliardo; he wanted them all gone.

"You can't eat toothpaste!" the braided man scolded, tried to take the tube away but the kid made that freakish shrieking sound again.

Stepping back, body flush to the white bathroom wall, Duo stood back and simply observed Heero. The dark-haired boy jumped off the counter, turned on the faucet, and washed his mouth out, using his fingers as a toothbrush. Spitting out the last of it, Heero sighed in relief, reposed his hands on the marble top, and hung his head low in defeat.

Duo reached around him with a washcloth he'd fetched from the shower, and twisted the knobs so warm water poured from the sink. The warm rag cleaned the left over smears of blood from his face. A gentle hand cradled and lifted his chin. Heero closed his eyes as Duo washed away the streaks caused by tears, the stick of sweat from his forehead, and a small fraction of the pain.

Dropping the washcloth in the sink, the braided man placed a comforting hand between Heero's shoulder blades - well, it was supposed to be comforting, but the tortured youth bent one elbow to bow away from the touch with a hiss.

Violet eyes appraised the inside out grey shirt, found a few dots of what looked to be blood along the top part of Heero's back. It didn't look serious, nothing bleeding copiously. And so he tugged at the hem, but Heero's shaky, slender fingers wrapped around his wrist to stop him.

"Take if off," Duo begged in pleading tone.

Lost in a whirlpool of intense, confusing emotions, Heero complied. Pivoting on his heel to face Duo, his trembling fingers lifted the hem of his grey shirt, drew it slowly over his head, and dropped it carelessly to the tiled bathroom floor.

Gasping at the mirrored image that greeted him, Duo fought the urge to punch the glass into shards because he knew the reflection was innocent...but, there laid before his amethyst eyes was the reflection of Heero's willowy, thin backbone riddled with four circular burns along the top curve of his spine in a straight line starting above the outgrowth of his shoulder blades and ending slightly below. The muscles in his body went taut, tight like the string of a bow ready to release an arrow. Grabbing Heero by both wrists, his eyes continued to drink in every wound; the tips of his fingers grazing over chaffed, reddened skin.

Duo knew these physical and mental scares weren't at the hands of a typical bully such as Muller and his gang, but he had to ask: "Who did this?" His question coming forth in a low, scarily even voice.

Heero shook his head vehemently. It was too soon. He was too exhausted to tell.

Letting Heero keep his torment to himself, Duo placed him back on the counter, washed around the burn wounds, wrung that washcloth to drip luke warm water over the injuries. As he drained the cloth of water, twisting all warm droplets free, cleansing the wounds without helpful medicine, but he had a sympathetic touch and baind-aids to cover the injuries.

Duo noticed how Heero curled into him, seeking some sort of pardon. The quavering boy drew further into him as he tried to push Heero gently away. "Come on, let's lie down and get some sleep," he guidance kindly.

The disbelieving look he was given from puffy, blood-shot blues confused him. Heero didn't think Duo would let him stay. His violet eyes watched helplessly as those weary blues filled with more tears, depressed and light-less consuming the defiant vibrant color that once held within.

"No, no, no, no," he begged in a low voice. "Don't cry."

Heero gasped harshly as the new tears flowed over his cleaned cheeks.

Those compassionate hands supported his face, thumbs swiping away the tears. Their foreheads pressed together. Duo unleashed a litany of hushed, mollifying sentiments.

They'd never be one hundred percent sure who initiated the kiss, but it happened; lingering, tender-hearted, and undemanding. Relinquishing the caress, they both liberated shaky, hot breaths that wash over each others faces, the bridge of their noses nuzzling together.

Their eyes met.

So close they could clearly distinguish the array of color and intricate, abstract wisping lines of one another's irises. The color so heavy, dark at the edge lightened towards the center. Microscopic flakes of yellow and orange surrounded Heero's pupil; the coloration lost at a distance under the powerfully brilliant blue. Stormy blue and light specks of grey encompassed Duo's; the tints and shades resembling a thundery cloud, giving his unique eyes an even greater, heavenly appearance.

Duo couldn't fight against the miserable, vulnerable orbs that peered back at him. This was the most susceptible he'd seen Heero. The kid was a shell of his former self and though that person taxed Duo of his reserves, this new face he was presented with grieved him more than the other.

Their lips met again with a touch more pressure.

Allowing himself to respond naturally, the braided man ran the fingers of his left hand through Heero's greasy, dirty hair. His right palm pressed firmly to the small of the teens back to bring their bodies closer. Heero placed both his hands on Duo's broad chest, nails scratching at his collar bones over the black cotton shirt. Consumed in the moment, Duo's tongue pressed forth from his mouth and was granted swift access into Heero's. Their mouths grooved together zealously until Duo took a large stride back, separating their bodies completely.

Taking a deep breath, clearing his throat, Duo found he couldn't procure words so he nodded his head dumbly, took Heero by the hand and led him out of the restroom. The kiss confused him, and though he knew it shouldn't have happened, he was more baffled by bliss of it.

Sitting on the edge of the mattress, the fatigued boy kicked off his sneakers, toed off his socks, and then laid by Duo on his side. With his head buried against Duo's chest, the mans' hand petting his hair, and with the steady thump of the braided man's heart close enough to his ear to hear, Heero fell into deep sleep almost immediately. Only the haven created by Duo's muscled arms could make him feel safe enough for slumber.

It would take more time for Duo to get back to sleep. A little past two in the morning and his mind was reeling. He wasn't sure if Heero would ever tell him everything that had happened, or who had harmed him...but he had a pretty good idea of who that person was.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Insanely hard to find these nowadays, but does anyone remember the US $2 bill? Pretty sure they're out of circulation now.
> 
> (2) The forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden is often referred to as an apple. Religious historians believe it was either a fig or a pomegranate.
> 
> (3) Intense emotions such as fear and disgust release chemicals signals through sweat that surrounding people can pick up on subconsciously. So, we humans communicate emotions through scent like a lot of other mammals.


End file.
